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SEEM LAK’ I AIN’T NEVER BREAK EVEN

• SHADOW OF
THE PLANTATION

CHARLES S. JOHNSON

Fisk University

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO • ILLINOIS

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PUBLISHED JULY I934

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COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A

OLD KING COTTON

STERLING BROWN

Ole King Cotton,

Ole Man Cotton,

Keeps us slavin’

Till we’se dead an’ rotten.

Bosses us ‘roun’

In his ornery way,

“Cotton needs pickin’!”

De Hell he say .

Starves us wid bumper crops,

Starves us wid po’,

Chains de lean wolf
At our do’.

Tiahed uh co’n pone,

Pork an’ greens,

Fat back an’ sorghum,

An’ dried up beans.

Buy one rusty mule
To git ahead —

We stays in debt
Until we’se dead;

Ef flood don’t git us

It’s de damn bo’ weevil,

Crap grass in de drought,

Or sump’n else evil;

Ef we gits de bales

When de hard luck’s gone,

Bill at de commissary
Goes right on.

Some planters goes broke,

An’ some gits well,

But dey sits on deir bottoms
Feelin’ swell;

An’ us in de crap grass
Catchin’ hell.

Cotton, cotton,

All we know;

Plant cotton, hoe it,

Baig it to grow;

What good it do to us

Gawd only know ! -Southern Road

Harcourt Brace & Co., 1932

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Background . i

The Pattern of the Plantation . i

The Tradition of the Plantation . 7

The Community . 12

The People . 29

II. The Family . 47

Courtship and Marriage . 47

The Children . . 57

Separation and Divorce . 71

What Is Respectable . 80

Shelter and Food . 90

III. Economic Life of the Community . 103

The Division of Labor . 103

The Pressure of the System . 119

IV. The School and the People . 129

Education of Parents and Children . 129

The Influence of Schooling on Social Changes . . 136

V. Religion and the Church . 150

The Church as a Social Institution . 150

The Changing Church . 170

VI. Play Life . 180

VII. Survival . 186

VIII. Conclusion . 208

Index . 213

• •
Vll

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE method and objective of this study demanded long hours
with each of the six hundred families who form the basis for
these observations. Without the aid of the skilled services of sev¬
eral field assistants and their complete and enthusiastic co-opera¬
tion, it would have been impossible to satisfy the requirement of
representative volume and of an intimate record of family life. In
this connection the work of Miss Ophelia Settle, Mr. Lewis Wade
Jones, Miss Josie Sellers, and Miss Ann Savage proved invaluable.
Besides, there have been others of the staff of the Social Science
Department whose work in checking and rechecking the statistical
data of the study merits fullest acknowledgment.

The study itself was made possible by the Julius Rosenwald
Fund, through Dr. Michael M. Davis, who has been interested and
in turn has interested the United States Public Health Service in
certain of the health problems of this and several other similar
counties of the South. To this Fund and to Dr. O. C. Wenger of
the United States Public Health Service grateful acknowledgments
are made.

The willingness of a number of scholars in this field to give at¬
tention to the data and to the author’s interpretation of them has
been as gratifying as their suggestions have been helpful. I wish
to acknowledge a debt of gratitude for the valuable criticism and
counsel of Dr. Louis Wirth, Dr. Ulrich B. Phillips, Mr. E. R. Em-
bree, Professor Monroe N. Work, Dr. W. F. Ogburn, Dr. Howard
W. Odum, and of my colleagues Professor Horace M. Bond and
Dr. E. Franklin Frazier. I reserve for special mention the vital
contribution to this volume of Dr. Robert E. Park, whose insight
and long acquaintance with this field have provided a constant
illumination for the whole development of the study.

C. S. J.

INTRODUCTION

SOME time during the winter of 1898 and the spring of 1899
William James read to his students in philosophy a notable
paper he had then just finished writing, to which he later gave the
quaint and intriguing title, “A Certain Blindness in Human
Beings.”

The “blindness” to which James here refers is a kind of blind¬
ness to which we are all subject, by the very limitation of our hu¬
man nature and of our individual experience, our blindness, name¬
ly, “to the feelings of creatures and peoples other than ourselves.”

“We are,” as James says, “practical beings each with limitations
and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the impor¬
tance of duties and the significance of the situations that call
these forth. But this feeling in each of us is a vital secret for sym¬
pathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too
much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in

_ y yT

ours. 1

It is not possible to suggest in a word the significance which this
fact of the isolation and loneliness of the individual — each in his
own little world, hugging his own personal secret — assumes in
James’s interpretation of it. Suffice to say that the fact connects
up directly with a definite philosophy to which James subscribed
and to a theory of knowledge to which — if he did not first formu¬
late it — he lent a powerful support.

My reason for referring to this essay here and to the conception
of human relations and of knowledge, which it so persuasively sets
forth, is that it seems to shed light, from an unexpected source,

1 William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; and to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals.

upon the problem and method of this present study and of social
studies generally, particularly when they are concerned with the
customs and institutions of isolated and provincial peoples; peoples
who, though they live close to, and dependent upon us, as we upon
them, are still outside the orbit of our ordinary life and under¬
standing.

This volume is concerned with the Negro peasants of the south¬
ern plantations, but the Negroes of the “black belts” are not the
only peoples in America who live on the outer margins of our un¬
derstanding and to whose vital secrets we must confess a certain
blindness. There are other peoples, white peoples, like the Acadi-
ans of southwestern Louisiana; the Mennonites and so-called Penn¬
sylvania Dutch of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and vicinity.
There are also the mountain whites of the Appalachians and the
peoples of mixed racial ancestry like the Mexicans of New Mexico
and the little isolated communities of Indian, Negro, and white
mixtures, scattered about in remote parts of Virginia, North Caro¬
lina, Alabama, and Louisiana. All of these are peoples who live,
to be sure, within the political boundaries of the United States but
live nevertheless on the margins of our culture. In this sense, and
for the further reason that they occupy a place somewhere between
the more primitive and tribally organized and the urban popula¬
tions of our modern cities, they may be called “marginal peoples.”
The distinction between them and the peoples by whom they are
surrounded is that they are not merely people, but folk people,
and their culture, in so far as it differs from that of the majority
of us in the United States, is a folk culture.

What is a folk culture and what is the folk? A very simple way
to state the matter is to say that the “folk” is a people whose cur¬
rent history is recorded, if at all, by the ethnologist rather than by
the historian or the newspaper. Not that folk peoples do not have
history, but it exists for the most part in the form of unrecorded
ballads and legends which, with its folk lore, constitutes a tradi¬
tion that is handed down from generation to generation by word
of mouth rather than through the medium of the printed page.

It is characteristic of the folk that it has a habitat and that its

Xll

culture is local. Gypsies are folk, too, but they are the exception.
Though they wander, they manage somehow to preserve a cultural
isolation and a tribal solidarity as complete as that of any other
preliterate people. In all our various attempts to study human
nature we invariably encounter these exceptions. They constitute,
in fact, the most valuable data that an investigation ordinarily
turns up: first, because they are the starting-points for fresh ob¬
servation and further reflection; and, second, because in the long
run the exceptions always prove the rule.

Redfield in his volume Tepoztlan , which is a study of one of the
marginal peoples of Mexico, similar in some respects to those in
the United States, is at some pains to define what he conceives the
folk to be. He says:

Such peoples enjoy a common stock of tradition; they are the carriers
of a culture. This culture preserves its continuity from generation to
generation without depending upon the printed page. Moreover, such
a culture is local; the folk has a habitat. And finally, the folk peoples
are country peoples. If folk lore is encountered in the cities it is never
in a robust condition, but always diminishing, always a vestige.2

And then he adds:

The southern Negro is our one principal folk. He has a local tradition
orally transmitted; he makes folk songs. Except for him we have to
search for folk peoples in the United States. In the mountains of the
south and southeast we have a sort of vestigal folk. And here and there,
in such occupations as involve long periods of isolation and a relative
independence of the printed page — as, for example, among lumbermen
or cowboys — a sort of quasi-folk develop, who write anonymous folk
songs and sometimes build up, around campfires, folk sagas of the Paul
Bunyan variety.

On the other hand, the folk are not to be confused and identified
with the peasant who has left the soil to live and work in the city.
Such peoples constitute what might be described as the “populus”
or, better still, the “proletariat.”

So the Negro of the plantation— though the two are closely re¬
lated and the history of the one goes far to explain the existence

2 Robert Redfield, Tepoztlan , A Mexican Village (University of Chicago Press, 1930),
pp. 1-6.

• • •
Xlll

of the other — is not to be identified with the mobile and migratory
Negro laborers who crowd the slums of southern cities, or, like the
hero of Howard Odum’s Rainbow round My Shoulder , go wander¬
ing about the country celebrating their freedom and their loneli¬
ness by singing “blues.”

These blues, which, by the way, first gained recognition as a
form of popular ballad in night clubs of Beale Street, Memphis,
are the natural idiom of the Negro proletarian, just as the “spiritu¬
als” have been, and to a very considerable extent still are, the
natural expression of the mind and the mood. of the plantation
Negro. The distinction between the folk of the villages and the
open country and the proletarians or populus of the city is ex¬
pressed and symbolized in the difference between the folk song
and the popular ballad, the spirituals and the blues.

Marginal peoples, peoples in transit between simpler and primi¬
tive and more sophisticated and complex cultures, such as charac¬
terize our modern industrial and urban civilization, constitute, as I
have suggested, a special problem in method, but one which is after
all fundamental to studies of society and human nature everywhere.

There are no special difficulties in describing the external forms
and the obvious expressions of a local culture. The difficulty con¬
sists in making that culture intelligible; in discovering the mean¬
ing and the function of usages, customs, and institutions.

Anthropologists, in their studies of primitive peoples, have dis¬
tinguished between (i) material and (2) non-material elements of a
culture. Material culture is represented by the tools, artifacts, and
in general the technical devices employed by a people in their deal¬
ings with the external world. Non-material culture, on the other
hand, includes all those institutions, ceremonial customs, ritual
dances, and what not by which a people maintains its morale and
is enabled to act collectively.

Institutions are, generally speaking, devices which come into
existence in the effort to act collectively and exist in order to make
collective action more effective.

xiv

But customs persist and preserve their external forms after they
have lost their original meaning and functions. Institutions are
borrowed or imposed upon peoples to whose traditions, instincts,
and actual needs they are quite foreign, or have not yet been fully
assimilated. Fashions change, and with the change institutions,
though they still persist, are looked upon with profoundly changed
attitudes.

Considerations of this sort have led anthropologists in studying
culture to distinguish between form and function, and to empha¬
size the subjective and less obvious aspects of the cultural com¬
plex. The study of a society or of a people turns out under these
circumstances to be the study not merely of its institutions but of
its mentality.

What is meant by mentality in this sense is stated impressively
by Redfield in the concluding chapter of his volume Tepoztlan.
“If by mentality is understood,” he says, “a complex of habits em¬
ployed in meeting unfamiliar problems,” then mentality, too, is an
aspect of culture. “If the individual undergoes experiences of a
very different sort from those undergone before, he develops a cor¬
respondingly new organ, a new mind.”

But there is a less obvious aspect of social institutions in which
they appear in even more intimate and vital association with the
people whose life they serve. It has been observed that as long as
their social institutions are functioning normally, primitive peoples
ordinarily exhibit an extraordinary zest in the life they lead, even
when that life, like that of the Eskimo in the frozen North or the
pigmies in the steaming forest of Central Africa, seems to be one
of constant privation and hardship.

On the other hand, when some catastrophe occurs which under¬
mines the traditional structure of their society, they sometimes
lose their natural lust for life, and that euphoria which enabled
them to support the hardships of their primitive existence fre¬
quently deserts them. That catastrophe may be, and frequently
is, the sudden advent of a more highly civilized people intent upon
their improvement and uplift by incorporating them in a more
highly organized industrial society.

Under such circumstances, a people may be so completely ob¬
sessed by a sense of their own inferiority that they no longer desire
to live as a people; and if they live as individuals, they will prefer
to identify themselves, as far as they are permitted to do so, with
the invading or dominant people.

It is in some such way as this, i.e., by the incorporation of de¬
feated or merely disheartened people into some larger and more
complex social unit, that castes are formed.

It is evident, in spite of all that has been written of human na¬
ture and of human behavior, that the sources of joy and sorrow
are still obscure. It is evident also that, as Stevenson says, in a
passage in Lantern Bearers quoted by James, “to miss the joy is
to miss all.” That is to say, if you miss the joy you miss the one
aspect of a people’s life which more than anything else gives vi¬
tality to cultural forms and ensures their persistence, possibly in
some new and modified form, under changed conditions. For this
reason, the most subjective and least obvious aspect of the life of
peoples and cultures is nevertheless one that cannot be neglected,
particularly in the case of peoples who, as I have said, are in proc¬
ess of transit and subject to all the vicissitudes of profound cul¬
tural change.

This zest for life is just that personal and vital secret which, for
each one of us, gives meaning and significance not merely to the
life of the individual but of the society, of whatever sort it be, of
which he is a member and a part.

Ill

Although it describes itself as a study of “social and cultural
change,” the materials on which this study is based are not those
with which anthropologists are familiar or are likely to approve.
As a matter of fact, the study starts with a different tradition —
the tradition, namely, of the rural sociologist, who conceives his
community rather as a statistical aggregate than as a cultural com¬
plex. One reason for this is the convenience and the necessity of
making use of the available statistics, which have been collected

xvi

and classified on the basis of existing administrative units rather
than of the region or of any other sort of natural area.

Thus the investigation assumed at the outset the character of a
survey and study of a population rather than of a people, and the
plan, as originally conceived, was, by a process of sampling, to
describe and characterize statistically a population area.

The area chosen for this survey was a slice of one of the familiar
“black belts,” historically the region of cotton culture in the South.
Macon County, of which Tuskegee is the county seat, is the seat
also of Booker Washington’s famous industrial school for Negroes
and the county which, during his lifetime, was, so to speak, the
rural laboratory in which he carried on his experiments in rural
education — experiments which graduates of his school and others,
with the assistance of the Rosenwald Fund, have extended to most
other parts of the South.

It was assumed, no doubt, that Macon County offered a fair
sample of Negro rural population, and that a study of its popula¬
tion would indicate what Negro education — unaccompanied, to be
sure, by any special or systematic effort to reorganize on any con¬
siderable scale the plantation system — had been able to do to keep
the Negro on the soil and, by raising the general level of his in¬
telligence and encouraging him to take the initiative in improving
his own condition, to improve the condition of the country as a
whole.

There were other reasons why a study of Negro culture should
assume the technical form of a survey beside the desirability of
starting with the available information in regard to the region.
One was the character of the Negro community itself, and of the
very tenuous lines of connections which hold the rural population
into any sort of solidarity that could be described as communal.
Another was the fact that the Negro community is so completely
interpenetrated and dependent upon the dominant white com¬
munity that it is difficult to conceive it as having any independent
existence.

Outside of the plantation the only centers of Negro life are the

XVII

rural churches and rural schools. The social situation is reflected
in the human geography of the county.

A bird's-eye view of Macon County discloses a country of softly
rolling uplands and interspersed with fragrant, wooded swamps.

Plantation, hamlet, and town, still rather widely dispersed, are
connected by a network of rural roads which, except for a few
stretches of recently constructed thoroughfare, wind their way
leisurely along rolling ridges in order to escape as far as possible
the perils of the sometimes heavy spring rains. Closer observation
of this same countryside discloses the existence of another, nar¬
rower, and less obvious network of footpaths which — unplanned,
unplotted, and without official recognition — intersect, connect,
and supplement but never compete with the public highways.

These two systems of transportation — the public highways con¬
necting the towns and the plantations and the footpaths connect¬
ing the humbler habitations of the Negro tenant farmers — suggest
and symbolize the complicated interrelations and divisions be¬
tween the races in Macon County and in the South generally,
suggest also some of the complexities and some of the difficulties
of studying one section of a population without taking some ac¬
count at the same time of the other.

If the study of culture is to reveal what makes life for indi¬
viduals or peoples either significant and exciting or merely dull,
what are the kinds of facts most likely to disclose this vital secret?

Undoubtedly the most revealing portions of the present study
are the candid comments of the peoples studied on their own
lives. As recorded here, in the language and accents in which
they were uttered, most of these statements have the character
of a human document.

The value of a human document as a datum is that it brings the
object that is under investigation closer to the observer. Like a
magnifying glass, it brings into view aspects of the object that were
before that time not visible or only partially so. It sometimes hap¬
pens that a casual remark, like a ray of light through a keyhole.

xvm

will illuminate a whole interior, the character of which could only
be guessed at as long as one’s observations were confined to the
exterior of the structure.

A good many of the remarks recorded in this study are so con¬
crete, so pregnant with human interest, that they might have been
written by Julia Peterkin or Du Bose Heyward, whose stories of
Negro life exhibit an insight and “acquaintance with” the life they
are describing that is unusual even in writers of realistic fiction.

As a rule, the individuals whose conversation and comments are
here recorded are not in any sense a selected group of outstanding
personalities in the community; rather they are just the ordinary
mine-run of the population. A good many of them are old women,
grandmothers, who with the freedom traditionally accorded to
“old mammies” on the plantation are accustomed to express them¬
selves more vigorously and more volubly than other members of
the family. Besides, grandmothers, partly because they are less
mobile than other members of the families and therefore more like¬
ly to be at home, are in a position to speak with authority in re¬
gard to marriages, births, deaths, and all the other facts that the
investigators’ schedules called for.

The statements recorded, while they do not represent a selected
group of individuals, do exhibit an interesting diversity of types
such as one would expect the intimate associations of an isolated
community would inevitably produce. It is true that every kind
of cultural association produces a certain degree of cultural homo¬
geneity, but it invariably produces at the same time characteristic
personality types. Among these an occasional individual is suffi¬
ciently outstanding to achieve a recognition in this record that is
not accorded to the others. This was the case of Zach Ivey, who
was clear and convinced that he had had a better time when he was
a slave than he had ever had since; and by w^ay of contrast to Zach
Ivey there was Riny Biggers, who had early been impressed with
the high value of literacy and differed profoundly from the views
on slavery which Zach Ivey professed.

It is interesting to know that the relative merits of slavery and
freedom are still a matter in regard to which there are differences

xix

of opinion among the Negroes on the plantations in the South.
It is indicative of the immense weight of the tradition which
still supports the plantation system. It makes significant and
intelligible a remark made to me years ago by an old Negro farmer
in Macon County who, though he could neither read nor write,
owned and conducted successfully a plantation of eleven hundred
acres. He said, with the peculiar quizzical expression of a man who
would like more light on an obscure problem: “You know we’se
jus’ so ign’rint down heah we don’ see much dif’rence ’tween
freedom an’ slavery, ’cep’ den we wuz workin’ fer ole marster an’
now we’se workin’ fer oursel’s.”

One can hardly escape the impression in viewing the facts of this
survey that it is the inheritance of a tradition, embodied in the
present plantation system, which more than anything else inhibits
the progress, not merely of the black tenant but the white land¬
lord, and that with the persistence of that tradition the small and
independent farmer cannot make headway.

Under these conditions the Negro rural school, instead of creat¬
ing a settled class of Negro peasant proprietors, seems, particularly
since the World War, to have conspired with other tendencies to
hasten the movement from the rural South to the northern cities.
On the whole, the plantation, as at present organized, seems to be
a sick and dying institution. It still remains, however, what it was
before the Civil War, the focus and center of the Negro life in the
rural community; but it is no longer able to maintain either the
discipline or the morale of an efficiently functioning institution;
and plantation life has apparently lost whatever zest it may ever
have had for the generations of white folk and black that it once
nourished.

The plight of the cotton plantation is probably due not entirely
to its inability to shake off its ancient heritage, which involves
among other things the tradition of Negro racial inferiority. The
prosperity of the cotton plantation in the southern states is de-

pendent, finally, upon its ability to compete with other cotton¬
raising areas in the world-market.

Most that is still problematic in the condition of the Negro
peasant seems to focus about two quite different institutions: (i)
the plantation and (2) the Negro peasant family. What is the fu¬
ture of either or both, since the fate of the one seems to be bound
up in that of the other?

The Negro peasant family, as it exists today, is certainly a
rather amorphous social organism. In slavery, parents had little
or no personal responsibility for the provision and care of their
children, since that office was early taken over by the planter or
his overseer, who assigned some older and experienced woman to
the task. The consequence was that natural maternal affection,
rather than any common economic interest, constituted the tie
that held the family together. The male member of the family did
not count for much in this arrangement. The family was, and still
is, matriarchal in character.

It was not until freedom imposed upon the Negro tenant the
necessity of making his farm pay that the Negro farmer began to
reckon his children as a personal asset. The effect of this was that
parents began to discourage the early marriage of their children,
the consequence of which would be to deprive them of their chil¬
dren’s services.

When a Negro farmer reached the position where he owned
property of his own, he had a new incentive and found a new
means for maintaining the permanence of the family, since he was
eager to transmit this property to his children, who in turn looked
forward to inheriting it. The permanence of the property interest
became the basis for a continuing family tradition, and for a more
consistent life-program for both the family as a whole and its in¬
dividual members.

As long, however, as the freedman continued to live under the
shadow of the plantation, these changes made but slow progress.
With the advent of emancipation the status of the Negro on the
plantation had been suddenly transformed from that of a field
hand to tenant farmer. But the actual change was not as great as

xxi

might have been expected. The freedman was not able at once to
enter into the spirit and tradition of a free competition and in¬
dustrial society. He had no conception, for example, of the secret
terror that haunts the free laborer; the fear, namely, of losing his
job and of being out of work. On the contrary, his first conception
of freedom was that of a condition in which he would be perma¬
nently out of work. So far, therefore, from being possessed by that
mania for owning things which is the characteristic, as the com¬
munists tell us, of a capitalistic society, his first impulse and aim
were to get as deeply in debt as possible. If, therefore, the agents
of the “Third International” find that such Negroes are as yet not
ripe for communism, it is undoubtedly because they have not had
as yet the opportunity to realize the evils of a free and competitive
society.

What the findings of this survey suggest, then, is: (i) the ne¬
cessity of a wider — in fact, a world-wide — and comparative study
of the cotton plantation not merely as an economic and industrial
but as a cultural unit; and (2) a comparative study of the actual
conditions of the world in which the people on the plantation live.

One thing that complicates any attempt to study Negro peasant
institutions and culture is the fact that, though the white man and
the Negro have lived and worked together in the United States for
three hundred years and more, the two races are still in a certain
sense strangers to one another. One way in which this fact finds
expression is in the statement that the Negro has not yet been,
and perhaps never can be, assimilated. Another and more drastic
expression of the same conviction is the familiar statement, re¬
peated in most every part of the world in which Europeans have
settled: “This is a white man’s country.”

It is very curious that anyone in America should still think of
the Negro, even the Negro peasant of the “black belts,” as in any
sense an alien or stranger, since he has lived here longer than most
of us, has interbred to a greater extent than the white man with
the native Indian, and is more completely a product than anyone

xxii

of European origin is likely to be of the local conditions under
which he was born and bred.

There is, nevertheless, a sense in which the Negro, even though
culturally he be a purely native product, is not assimilated, though
in just what sense this is true it is difficult to say.

One is reminded of the old lady who, visiting the Indian village
at the World’s Fair, was moved to speak a friendly word to one of
these aborigines. What she said was: “How do you like our coun¬
try?”

It was her view that, this being a white man’s country, an Indian
would naturally feel a little strange in it. It did not occur to her
that an Indian might not share this common-sense assumption.

It is just these naive assumptions, which are matters of common
sense in one class, caste, sect, or ethnic group but not in others,
that seem to constitute the final obstacle to the assimilation of
peoples. They reveal social distances between individuals and peo¬
ples otherwise unsuspected.

William Graham Sumner has invented a word to describe the
state of mind that these innocent and generally unconscious preju¬
dices betray. He calls it “ethnocentrism.” In savage people eth-
nocentrism betrays itself in the disposition to call themselves
“men” or “human beings.” Others are something else not defined.
They are, perhaps, like the flora and fauna, part of the landscape
but not human.

This trait is not confined to nature people. We are all disposed
to assume that other peoples, with other customs, are not quite
human in the sense that we feel this is true of ourselves. This is
part of that blindness to which James refers.

The incurable ethnocentrism of peoples makes it difficult to
communicate freely and candidly with strangers, particularly
when the purpose of the inquirer is to go behind exteriors and dis¬
cover what is behind their faces, namely, their attitudes.

The great value and the great vogue of psychoanalysis is due to
the fact that it has developed a technique for getting behind visible
forms and the external expressions of the people to discover the
subjective aspect of personal behavior and culture, the thing which

XXlll

at once intrigues and baffles the student of personality and of cul¬
ture.

If this ethnocentrism makes it difficulty on the one hand, to
discover the subjective aspect of a people’s culture, it makes it
difficult, on the other hand, to describe realistically their customs
and usages when one knows that such descriptions are likely to be
misinterpreted. One is often tempted under such circumstances to
state things in a manner to meet and correct in advance the ex¬
pected misinterpretation. But that, too, is impracticable and no
solution of the difficulty. Realistic descriptions of manners and
customs are always likely to be a little shocking. In the final anal¬
ysis, however, it is undoubtedly true that if anything, at least
anything customary and accepted in any human society, seems
shocking or merely quaint, it is because that custom or usage is
not quite intelligible.

There is an old French adage to the effect that “to comprehend
all is to forgive all,” and not merely forgive but accept as some¬
thing not alien but indubitably human, like ourselves.

Only so far as this is anywhere achieved can such studies of
human nature as this be said to have wholly achieved their pur¬
pose.

Robert E. Park

xxiv

Chapter I

THE BACKGROUND

THE PATTERN OF THE PLANTATION

THE plantation as represented in tradition and popular fancy
is so far removed from the existing institution as to be but
slightly related to the character of the folk that it bred. In the
romantic fiction, which has so largely supported the concept, it is
a far-flung, comfortably self-contained agricultural unit, crested
by a spacious white mansion with imposing colonnades supporting
cool and spacious verandas, and surrounded in ample and flower¬
laden grounds. In the background are the cotton fields stretching
far and white into the distance. There are long rows of white¬
washed Negro cabins; sleek, contented slaves, laughing- and sing¬
ing as they work; little pickaninnies capering with the abandon¬
ment of irresponsible fledglings in the clearings of the cabins or on
the smoothly clipped lawns. As further evidence of opulence and
self-sufficiency there are the smokehouse, the sawmill, the black¬
smith and carpenter shops, and the commissary.

Phillips gives an account, written in i860 by a visitor to Oak
Grove, in Alabama, on the Cocoa River.1 Four hundred acres of
rich land were in cultivation. Behind the mansion, which com¬
manded a broad valley view from its verandas, were the dairy, the
smokehouse (containing thirty thousand pounds of pork), the
barn, the corn cribs, the wagon sheds, and, somewhat removed,
the inevitable group of Negro cabins. On a stream bank stood a
gristmill and sawmill, and in another part of the tract a second
slave quarter and the overseer’s home.

Such a plantation as Oak Grove came nearer to the popular con-

1 Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South.

ception than the preponderant majority. The stage, and particu¬
larly the minstrel, a long literary tradition, beginning no doubt
with Swallow Barn> and warm memories of the past have helped
build up the conception most familiar to the present generation.
Economic factors have very largely been lost in the pictures hand¬
ed down. Francis Pendleton Gaines, who has studied and dis¬
cussed the southern plantation at some length, observed that

the feudalistic structure of society is probably the foremost large fact
reflected in the tradition. The tradition .... manifests little interest in
the number that composed a gang, or the labor that made a task, cares
nothing for the difference between a full and a three quarters hand, or for
the amount of furlough granted pregnant women; instead, the romancer
seizes upon a bandana glistening in the sun, upon a coon hunt, a break¬
down, a mammy’s lullaby, and multiplies these things indefinitely.2

British travelers in America during the heyday of the planta¬
tion consistently pointed out the similarity of the southern planta¬
tion in social ideal to the historic English manor, and this fact has
significance. For, whether or not the ideal was ever actually
achieved in point of luxury or of social brilliance or in universality
of fact, the tradition registers a rough conformity to the feudalistic
patterns, and, as Gaines so pointedly observes, the inferences easi¬
ly included a magnificence and medieval splendor which were, in
reality, lacking.3

The actual plantation devoted to cotton was based on a rigorous
and dull routine, with strict diversification of labor: house serv¬
ants, field hands, cooks, blacksmiths, carpenters, the midwife ‘Tor
white and black of the neighborhood, as well as a doctress of the
plantation,” overseers, and, when they could be afforded, drivers
to maintain discipline and order on the place, and be responsible
for the quiet of the Negro houses and for the proper performance
of tasks. In January there was ginning, sorting, and moting of
cotton; in February more ginning and moting, ground-cleaning,
fence-mending, and ditching. In March there was bedding of cot¬
ton ground; in April planting, fencing, ditching, picking joint
grass, working cotton — the eternal hoe industry. In May, June,

2 The Southern Plantation. 3 Ibid p. 153.

July, and August more hoeing and working and some picking; in
September, October, and November more picking, clearing new
ground; in December moting and ginning. There were tasks and
punishments for falling short. Every detail of life was regulated
not by any internal compulsions but by a system of physical pun¬
ishments and rewards. Once established, custom and routine gave
permanence to the structure of relations. Life, on the whole, was a
grim business. Such were the imperatives of the economic system.

The Negro of the plantation came into the picture with a com¬
pletely broken cultural heritage. He came directly from Africa or
indirectly from Africa through the West Indies. There had been
for him no preparation for, and no organized exposure to, the
dominant and approved patterns of American culture. What he
knew of life was what he could learn from other slaves or from the
examples set by the white planters themselves. In the towns where
this contact was close there was some effect, such as has many
times been noted in the cultural differences between the early
Negro house servants and the plantation hands. On the planta¬
tion, however, their contact was a distant one, regulated by the
strict “etiquette” of slavery and the code of the plantation.

The present Negro population of these old plantation areas can
best be understood by viewing it in the light of this plantation
tradition, with its almost complete dependence upon the immedi¬
ate landowner for guidance and control in virtually all those
phases of life which are related to the moving world outside. The
Negro families retain, through the older members of the com¬
munity, a distinct memory of this early society. They take their
cues from it; they are seriously affected when the relationship fails.
Such families as escape from the prevailing economy of depend¬
ence into the new responsibilities which go with independence find
economic complications and shades of social conflict which mani¬
fest themselves in various ways, sometimes prompting them to
migration, but as often leading to resignation and relapse from the
ownership status to tenantry. The gradual decline in Negro owner¬
ship and the increase in the tenant class are evidences of this
struggle.

In things economic there is everywhere now this dull, sometimes
fatalistic, and unquestioning dependence upon the landowners and
the soil, both of which are at times capricious. Toward this situa¬
tion with its uncertainties the Negro families have adopted an atti¬
tude of easy-going trustfulness, reinforced by religion and adjust¬
able in an amazing degree to the frequent discouragements of crop
failures. In things social the group turns inward, finding its satis¬
factions in expressions of social life which are often elemental, but
under certain traditional controls which are distinguishably a heri¬
tage of the plantation system under the institution of slavery.

In a sense the southern rural Negro population has tended to
represent the surviving traditions of an earlier period. They have
been the repositories of certain folk ways which, in the changing
pattern of American life, are being discarded. Puckett has pointed
out that the unlettered rural folk, and especially the Negroes who
have had fewer educational advantages on the whole than have
the rural whites, are of a “very conservative nature and often cling
to outworn usages and customs, many of which were practiced by
the populace at large but later discarded and forgotten by the
more educated elements.”4 Their dialect is in part a survival of
the English of the colonists, their superstitions most often are
borrowed from whites, their religious beliefs are in large part the
same as those held by isolated whites, their folk lore is scarcely dis¬
tinguishable from that brought over from Europe by the early
colonists, their religious emotionalism is similar to that commonly
demonstrated in white Methodist camp meetings until very re¬
cently.

When these early patterns were imperfectly copied, as would be
expected from the nature of their relationship to their white mas¬
ters, it is not difficult to understand how imperfectly they would
be reflected later in behavior as well as in beliefs. Viewed in this
light, such matters as “illegitimacy,” relations of parents to chil¬
dren, divorce, extra-marital relations, food habits, the uses of
leisure, behavior in emotional crises involving love, death, reli-

4 Newbell N. Puckett, “Religious Folk-Beliefs of Whites and Negroes,” Journal of
Negro History , January, 1931, pp. 9-35.

gion, become more intelligible. The patterns of social behavior to
which the Negroes were exposed, whether set by planters or poor
whites, cannot be said to have been ideal, from the point of view
of current standards. Many crudities of manners, now largely
abandoned by the white population, were at one time accepted
rules of conduct and still survive deeply imbedded in the modes of
social life of the Negroes, modified only as they have been able to
escape their cultural isolation.

An important aspect of the feudal ideal was provincialism, “the
splendid isolation,” which in itself has given a certain flavor to the
white former master as well as to the Negro former slave in the
present survivals of the plantation. The plantation itself operated
against anything like widespread culture.5 The high vogue of
drinking, gambling, and dueling would perhaps be expected to be
carried over to the slaves as part of their conception of the privi¬
leges of freedom. Limited as they were by the exigencies of slave
marriage and slave family life, it is not unnatural that standards of
morality would be imperfectly understood. Moreover, despite the
strength of specific moral standards current during slavery, it was
impossible for them to escape observing the broad lapses at times
from these ideals, on the part of the gentlemen of the plantation
themselves. The poorer whites were largely illiterate and frequent¬
ly accused by the master-class of a complete lack of culture as well
as of morals. Here again, though perhaps not as close as in the for¬
mer case, was an influence which could prove of little value to the
maturing of the Negro plantation slave’s social concepts and ideals.

One characteristic of folk groups is isolation. Rural areas in gen¬
eral exhibit a measure of isolation, but it is of the nature of rural
life in America to destroy itself through increase of communication
with the outside. There are indeed few rural areas which aspire
ultimately to be self-contained and exclusive. Natural barriers are
only temporary obstructions to communication, and with the rapid
increase in transportation, literacy and reading, the radio and the
motion picture, and the mail-order catalogue, distance — physical
and social — is being steadily dissolved.

s Gaines, op. cit.

Of the possibilities and consequences of isolation in our own cul¬
ture the American Negroes present an excellent example — an ex¬
ample all the more interesting because Negroes now represent vir¬
tually every stage of the acculturation process in America, and
have found a place somewhere in every occupation from the most
backward to the most forward.

Actually, distance from the centers of larger activity plays only
a minor role in an isolation which is for them fundamentally cul¬
tural. According to accepted social theory, there is no American
“folk” because there is no American peasantry. But everyone
knows that this is less a fact than an ideal. There are persistent
social blocs which for one reason or the other defy prompt incor¬
poration into the approved general pattern.

The Negroes in areas of the South, notably in the cotton and
cane belts, represent an American type which can most nearly be
described as “folk,” and so far as their lives are rooted in the soil,
they are, perhaps, the closest approach to an American peasantry.
“To be shaped in mind and social reaction, to some extent in char¬
acter and finally in expression,” says Mary Austin, “is to be folk.”
The marks of such an encircled life may be observed in their fixed
accommodation, to the prevailing economic system, an accommo¬
dation so complete as to be commonplace. It may be observed in
the characteristic folk ways associated with this life; in the char¬
acteristic forms of its thought and expression; in the illiteracy
which shields them from the contacts and influences by which
social changes are introduced, and which limits the range of their
interests; restricts the development of thought and speculation
beyond the requirements of their simple routine of life. It may be
observed in the survival, with but small modifications, of the tra¬
dition of slavery; in the survival of the tradition of the plantation,
which in turn embodies an economic system affecting the proprie¬
tors as wTell as the tenants. If these folk groups have a social life,
it is unique and is due in large measure to the fact that they are
cut off from the most direct channel of communication with the
outside world and its interests through the economic system itself,

which restricts economic negotiations virtually to their immediate
white landlords.

Given the setting of a high degree of Negro tenantry in the
familiar cotton economy, and similar measure of isolation, dif¬
ferences between these Negro folk groups are not great. In the
area studied in Macon County, Alabama, the group was a fairly
homogeneous one, and was adjusted, both physically and mental¬
ly, to the tradition of cotton cultivation inherited from the period
in which it reached its nadir as a system, before the Civil War.

THE TRADITION OF THE PLANTATION

The state of Alabama is a country of extremes, from the rich
Black Belt area, superbly adapted to cotton cultivation, to the
wretched pine barrens where impoverished whites were driven be¬
fore the Civil War by the richer and stronger slave-owning pro¬
prietors. Three belts of the Appalachian Mountains terminate in
the state, merging with one another and with the gulf coastal
plains. The northern portion of the state, transected by the Ten¬
nessee River, is a part of the Allegheny-Cumberland Plateau. It is
fertile land, but not so richly fertile as other sections. To the south
is the convulsive irregularity of the Appalachians, which became at
a late period in the development of the state the center of the min¬
ing industry around Birmingham. These were sparsely populated
as late as 1850. 6 Across the center of the state, extending from
Randolph County on the Georgia border to Fayette County near
the Mississippi line, is another area of barely fertile territory but
with occasional patches of rich fertility.

The Black Belt begins along the line marked by Montgomery
and includes eleven counties, among which is Macon, the focal
point of these observations. This section has been historically the
home of the planters. South of the Black Belt is the sandy stretch
which has resisted cultivation and was little known throughout
the early history of the state except to be dismissed with the desig¬
nation of “Piney Woods.”

6 Boyd, Alabama in the Fifties.

As an important cotton-growing state Alabama utilized the
plantation system to the fullest. It has always been even more
agricultural than Virginia or Carolina. Importance as a cotton
state was manifested for years in the state’s larger balance of ex¬
ports of cotton over the southern states, and the dominance of the
plantation system is marked historically in the fact that a bare 7
per cent of the population in i860 owned 333,000 slaves.

The cotton counties were the chief slave counties and are, con¬
sequently, the plantation counties. They are Dallas, Marengo,
Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Macon, and Montgomery. Sections of
the state, poorer as well as less adapted to cotton cultivation, had
an average of 1.4 slaves to the household. Madison County, in
the northern part of the state, actually had over two families to
each slave. The average number of slaves per plantation for the
state was 4.5. However, in the cotton counties the large planta¬
tions set the prevailing patterns. In 1850 there were 790 owners of
from 30 to 70 slaves; 550 owners with from 70 to 100 slaves; 312
with from 100 to 200; 24 with from 200 to 300; and 10 with from
300 to 500. Thus some 150,000 of the slaves were on plantations
of 50 or more, even though only a third of the white people were
directly interested in slavery.7

On the one hand were the poor planters still living in their rude
log houses, with unglazed windows and lacking most of the refine¬
ments, but obsessed with the urge for more land on which to plant
more slaves. On the other hand were the wealthy proprietors who
stretched huge plantations over a country so unhealthy and un¬
developed that they could not themselves live in it, and settled
themselves in such luxury as their means would allow in Mont¬
gomery, Tuscaloosa, and Tuskegee. Around these latter a society
developed. But with few exceptions there was on the plantations
a complete absence of those touches of light and civilization to
temper the lot of the slaves.

Macon County was a part of the territory ceded by the Musco¬
gee Indians, established by an act in 1832, and took its name from
a North Carolina statesman. When General Macon died, Thomas

7 ibid.

Jefferson referred to him as “the last of the Romans.” The county
covers about 600 square miles, devoted zealously to cotton culti¬
vation from the beginning of the English and American occupa¬
tion. It was the birthplace of Osceola, the mixed-blood Seminole
chief who for many years resisted the invasion of the whites with
unparalleled ferocity. From the earliest period of the Indian wars,
Tuskegee, the county seat, was a garrison of one sort or the other.
Many of the best known of the early founders of the county were
from Georgia: Dougherty, Logan, Battle, Perry, Mason, and
Echols. They came at the beginning of the nineteenth century just
as the state emerged as a new territory.

When Olmstead passed through Macon County before the Civil
War, going from Columbus, Georgia, to Montgomery, he was ap¬
palled and depressed by the dreary aspect of things. He labored
for one full day “through a hilly wilderness, with a few dreary
villages, and many isolated cotton farms, with comfortless habita¬
tions for blacks and whites upon them.”

Early foreign travelers in America always noted this dismal
stretch in covering the highlights of the new republic. They would
land in New York, move southward through Philadelphia, Wash¬
ington, Richmond, and Norfolk to Charleston. These all were new,
separate, and unique attractions, evidences of youthful statehood.
From Charleston the next point was Savannah, and then on to
Macon, Georgia. From Macon the route led through Columbus
across the dirty Chattahoochee into Alabama, through Macon
County to Montgomery, the capital of the state, and at one time
the capital of the Confederacy. Russell, of the London Times ,
found himself on this trail ten years after Olmstead, and it was
still uninteresting country, to him, with nothing to recommend it
but the natural fertility of the soil. The people were rawer, ruder,
and bigger; chewed more tobacco, squirted it farther; and swore
more earnestly. The towns, then as now, consisted of a huddle of
small houses and cabins, an inn, a blacksmith shop, and a post
station, and rearing up occasionally in the midst of these the more
pretentious dwelling of a proprietor, gleaming white.

In 1850 Tuskegee was not only a thriving town but laid claims

to being something of an agricultural center. It had a population
of 3,000, two female colleges, a male high school, two schools for
boys and girls, three churches with nine ministers, two hotels, six
dry-goods stores, three drug stores, three groceries, three confec¬
tionery stores, one ice-cream saloon, two jewelers and watch¬
makers, three tailor shops, three furniture stores, two carriage
establishments, a steam mill, millinery and mantua-making places,
three printing offices, four editors, and seventeen lawyers.8 It was
the heart of a powerful plantation area.

In 1840 there were just 5,369 whites and 5,878 blacks in Macon
County. In twenty years the whites added 3,000 to their numbers,
but to the blacks were added 13,000 more slaves. In the back
country, moving toward Montgomery, the vast plantations began.
At La Place lived Dr. N. B. Cloud, described as “the giant of ante¬
bellum agriculture.” Mount Meigs was one but not the only sprawl¬
ing village. To the west and south the traveler might stumble
upon other clusters of dwellings, or stage-coach stations, with their
characteristic indications of frontier life.

Tuskegee is better known now for the Tuskegee Normal and In¬
dustrial Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, and for the
United States Veterans Hospital (for Negro veterans of the World
War). Three railroad lines cross the county, two of the Western
Route and one of the Atlantic Coast Line. In addition there are
three main automobile highways, a most important one being that
from Atlanta to Montgomery.

Once a section of large plantations, Macon County, as many
others, has gradually been broken up into smaller areas, developed
by tenants. There has been some landownership by Negroes, but
this, in recent years, has followed the general decline, only a bit
more rapidly. In 1930 there were 3,714 farms and farm operators,
242 less than in 1920. Of these, 3,1 14 were Negroes and 600 whites.
The whites lost 7 during that decade while the Negroes lost 235.
The 600 white operators had 71,855 acres in farms, or an average
of 103 acres per operator; the 3,114 Negroes had 145,173 acres, or
46 acres per Negro operator. That it is a tenant area is attested in

8 Ibid.

the fact that 43 per cent of the white owners control 43,376 acres,
the remaining 57 per cent of Negroes only 32,899 acres, while
there are 140,753 acres in farms which are developed by tenants
and owned, for the most part, by absentee landlords of either this
state or other states. There are, to be exact, 21,688 acres developed
by white tenants and 104,417 by Negro tenants.

Although the entire county is regarded roughly as a part of the
Black Belt, the northern and southern sections show important
differences. In the northern section, where trading is done about
the town of Notasulga, are to be found many small farms operated
by whites. Over many years these small proprietors, or poor
whites, have filtered into the northern section as an alternative to
emigration farther west, in order to escape the consequences of the
plantation system. The southwestern section of the county is, and
always has been, characterized by large plantations with Negro
tenants.

Throughout the area are scattered the homes of Negroes which
date back, for the most part, to a period of forty years and more.
The small unpainted or whitewashed cabins, surrounded by a dis¬
ordered array of outhouses, are spaced at distances convenient for
plantation development. Most of the buildings have the worn and
sagging aspect of age, with their invariable “dog run” providing a
cooling shade; vagrant and inclosed patches of garden, growing
close to the house, their newspaper wall covering, and, piled in
some spare corner, a dirty heap of cotton seed.

In the early summer there are wide areas of cotton, except for
patches of undeveloped woods, sandy areas, where nothing will
grow, and the essential stretches of corn and sorghum. Here and
there is a house of different design, with weatherboarding. These
are the homes of white residents, and occasionally of Negro own¬
ers. The villages are small concentrations around a general store
or commissary, gin, post-office, a church, and the homes of the pro¬
prietorial white landowners and residents. Roughly, the present
arrangement is a survival of the earlier plantation system under
the old parish division.

The old blacksmith shop and stable of the early days of the

county have given place to an automobile repair shop. The inn is
a grocery store. The houses are the same, only generations older.
The white of the mansion house has gone, symbolizing, it would
almost seem, the inevitable abandonment by the lords of the
manor to the Negroes who still hang on, trying to nurse a living
out of the earth. Foxtail and broomsedge, harbingers of senility,
and the ubiquitous boll weevil, a new pestilence, keep this black
labor alive, vainly fighting against the approaching final desola¬
tion. Everywhere there are the sad evidences of an artless and ex¬
hausting culture of cotton.

The hard white highways of Alabama have drawn a ring as dis¬
tinct as the color line around these decaying plantations — each with
its little settlement of black peasantry. Here they live almost
within sight of the passing world, dully alive, in an intricate alli¬
ance with a tradition which has survived the plantation itself.
The plantation of olden times has gone, leaving them a twin part¬
ner of the earth, and upon these two — black man and the earth —
the proprietor himself, growing ever poorer, depends for the mutu¬
al preservation of all. The machine has not entered here yet, for
the routine of cotton cultivation, and especially weeding and pick¬
ing, demands a discrimination which can be taught the dullest
peasant, but which no machine as yet has mastered. As a conse¬
quence, the system has continued to breed its own labor support
in the thousands of Negroes whose lives and only hopes are bound
up with its fate.

THE COMMUNITY

The area of Macon County covered by this study extends over
200 square miles and is virtually the total lower third of the coun¬
ty. There are the small village concentrations, but over four-fifths
of the population live out in the open country on and around the
farms which they own or rent, or the plantations on which they
are employed. The village communities are, as a rule, so loosely
identified by the names that confusion exists even among the resi¬
dents as to where one begins and the other ends. Since the towns
are so largely built for the convenience of the white folks and there

is so little advantage to the Negro farming population in living in
the towns, these locations are scarcely more than post-office ad¬
dresses and occasional market places for Negroes.

The center of this population is about ten miles down the high¬
way from Tuskegee and from four to ten miles in the country back
of the highway. Tuskegee, if reached by horse and wagon, which
is a popular method of travel, despite the vogue of the automobile,
is a full day’s journey away. The school is known, but visits there
are rare. Occasionally produce or chickens are carried to the vil¬
lage to be marketed. Jerry Wilson, living in Shorter, admitted a
certain interest in the place. He said: “If I had some money I’d
hire somebody to take me to Tuskegee. I went up dere once to
commencement.” In Sambo a group of cabins had been white¬
washed eighteen years before in anticipation of a visit from Booker
T. Washington. That was the last coating they had had, and to all
appearances the last effective contact with the institution. The
nearest large city of the state is Montgomery; there has been some
migration back and forth from this city and across the Georgia
line.

The distribution of these families conforms to the physical ar¬
rangement of the plantations. The most frequent layout is the
cabin, or small cluster of cabins, for each convenient agricultural
unit suitable for renting or tenant-farmer use. The very large plan¬
tations have close-set rows of cabins on the edge of vast stretches
of cotton land. Occasionally some fortuitous division of land
throws a group of cabins or frame dwellings together. Traveling
through the country, one may observe, standing stark and alone
at the crossroads, a church or a store, with no dwelling in sight.
It is a part of the character of this community, it would seem, to
be bound together over a wide area by crooked little footpaths
which serve as the threads of neighborliness. Such loose physical
association must, of necessity, foreclose certain advantages of co¬
operation for social improvement and protection; and make diffi¬
cult, if not impossible, the development of a sense of community
such as might be found in more closely knit villages or in town life.

Here live almost hidden in the fields, or at wide intervals along

the country road, over i 1,000 Negroes. There is, however, scarcely
a stretch of this territory which does not give some sign of life.
Along the dusty roads men in the universal garb of blue-denim
overalls are forever trudging, casually going somewhere. They are
interested in every happening that crosses their vision. Around
the cabins or small frame dwellings, visible from the roadway, chil¬
dren are at play, old folks are puttering about or chatting idly in
the cooling shade of the dog-run. Pots of soiled clothing are boiling
in the yard, attended with a stick by women too old for the fields.
Old men tinker with rickety plows or the intricate disrepair of a
mule’s harness. A loud laugh from out the cluttered spaces calls
attention to another cabin set far back from the road. Slinking,
hungry dogs infest the region of the houses. Adolescent girls, their
hair twisted and held in thin stiff braids by tough threads, sit idly,
dangling bare legs, scaly with pellagra. A wagon in which chairs
have been placed, and occasionally an excessively noisy and anti¬
quated Ford, carry teeming families to town. Shorters, Hardaway,
Sambo, Chesson, Liverpool, are only political divisions. Negroes
of this area neither know nor are bound by these artificial bound¬
aries.

According to the 1930 census there were 22,320 Negroes in the
total population of 27,103 persons in Macon County. The Negro
population was only slightly more than that for 1910, but con¬
siderably greater than in 1920, when it was 19,614. The decrease
between 1910 and 1920 may be attributed primarily to the migra¬
tions during the war period. In spite of the recent gains during the
past decade, the proportion of Negroes in the total population has
steadily decreased, being 84.6, 83.3, and 82.3 per cent for the three
decennial censuses of 1910, 1920, and 1930. The effects of the
migration are still apparent in the present age composition of the
population, although it is manifest that many apparent irregulari¬
ties in the age distribution as represented by the census should be
attributed to ignorance on the part of the people concerning their
ages.

The 612 families on which this study is based are located in eight
settlements. These settlements as indicated do not conform to po-

litical or administrative divisions. Although in some cases they
have the same name as the precincts for the county, they repre¬
sent more nearly the community to which the people feel they
belong. Table I shows the number of families in each subcom¬
munity included in this study.

In the 612 families there were 2,432 persons, or slightly more
than a tenth of the Negro population in the county in 1930. The
age distribution of the Negro population in this county showed the
deviations from the normal distribution which have been attribut-

TABLE I

Location

Shorter

Hardeway

Millstead

Chesson

Liverpool

Tuskegee

Sambo

Cecil

Total

Number. . . .

276

187

6l2

ed to migration.9 It has also been recognized that these deviations
from the normal distribution are due to errors in estimating ages.10
In addition to the smallness of the group between twenty and
forty, there is also a smaller group of children under one than ap¬
pears in the age distribution of the native white population.11 The
612 families included in this study show the same abnormalities,

9 See U.S. Census , II (1920), 150, for the following comment: “The age distribution of
Negroes in urban and in rural areas is affected by the very considerable country-to-city
migration of persons of this race in the active-age periods, and probably also by differences
in birth and death rates between the two classes of communities.”

10 “The age distribution of males and females among the Negroes, as reported, presents
a peculiar condition. According to the returns there was in 1920 a slight excess of females
below the age of 1 5, a much larger excess of the age period from 1 5 to 34, and a small excess
in the 35-44 period. From the ages of 45 to 69, however, there was a very great excess of
men, followed by a moderate excess in the 70-79 periods and an excess of women in the
ages above 79. The ratio of males to females for the Negroes in the period 45-49 (138.7 to
100) was higher than the foreign born white ratio for any age period. The number of Negro
men enumerated as in this age period in 1920 (320,506) was almost exactly the same as the
number reported for the age period 35-39 in 1910 (320,450). This, of course, is an impossi¬
bility, for the reason that, disregarding the slight effect of immigration, the group of Negro
men 45 to 49 years of age in 1920 would be made up solely of the survivors of those in the
35-39 age period in 1910. Inconsistencies of this character are due, wholly or in large part,
to errors in estimating ages which cannot be ascertained exactly by the enumerators”
(ibid., pp. 147-48).

11 “The age distribution of the Negroes and Indians, which is practically unaffected by
immigration, is roughly similar to that of native whites. Among the Negroes, however,

with the exception that the deficiency of males is noticeable at an
earlier age period and the preponderance of females is greater. In
the Negro population for the county there were, in 1930, 98 more
males than females, while in our families the difference was much
greater, being 146 for the 612 families. The deficiency of males in
the population surveyed was almost entirely among those between
the ages of fifteen and forty. The percentage of the population
composed of boys between fifteen and nineteen was 1.4 per cent
smaller than for the girls. This disproportion was even greater for
men between twenty and thirty, and thirty and forty. The per¬
centage in favor of the women amounted to 2.9 and 2.5, respective¬
ly, for these two age groups.

Survivals

The essential observation of this study is that the Negro popu¬
lation of this section of Macon County has its own social heritage
which, in a relatively complete isolation, has had little chance for
modification from without or within. Patterns of life, social codes,
as well as social attitudes, were set in the economy of slavery. The
political and economic revolution through which they have passed
has affected only slightly the social relationships of the community
or the mores upon which these relations have been based. The
strength and apparent permanence of this early cultural set have
made it virtually impossible for newer generations to escape the in¬
fluence of the patterns of work and general social behavior trans¬
mitted by their elders.

Macon County has a Negro population with a tradition much
older than that of a Negro population in any city of either the
North or the South. It offers little encouragement to new blood.
The strength of tradition thus is magnified because of the low level
of literacy and consequent imperviousness of the area to the modi¬
fying influence of news and the experiences of other communities.

the proportion of children under 5 is considerably smaller than in any of the native white
classes, while the proportions in the age periods from 10-29 years are smaller than the
corresponding ones for either the native whites of native parentage or those of foreign par¬
entage” ( ibid p. 146).

Together these factors tend, naturally, to give unwonted prestige
and authority to the older families, who have at least the factual
argument of survival to bolster their claims to importance.

A useful clue to the character of the present population is to be
found in the character of the elders themselves, and their active
memories of the past. Much of this study will be concerned with
the social tradition of this group and how it is being modified, even
though slowly, by various new outside influences. One of the first
circumstances encountered in dealing with this older population is
the confusion about ages. Only with their presumed independent
status have they found it necessary to reckon their own ages. It
is only natural, thus, that ages are calculated from the coming of
freedom, but even with such a point of reference there is a wide
range of speculation. Georgiana Jackson explained: “I don’t know
how old I am. I was born in slavery. I remember when the Yan¬
kees first come and say dere want no more slavery.” Liza Cloud,
now blind, decrepit, and extremely dirty in her neglect, said:
“Slavery I know all about, looks like. I was sixteen years old when
the Yankees come through. I can’t tell about the year I was born
but I know the month. I was born the first of May. You know
back there colored folks didn’t know nothing about the years.”
Still another, a male family head reckoned his age, with no qualms
of uncertainty, from the fact that he was “a half-hour old when
freedom come.” Even this type of record lends itself more satis¬
factorily to calculation than some other speculations based, for
example, upon the type of clothing worn, or the amount of work
one was able to do, or the condition of the plank road running
through the county at the time of their first age consciousness.

The most common method of keeping reasonably accurate ages
is through their “white folks,” who made and kept this record for
the Negroes. Those who lacked the continuing relationship with a
single white family would have them set down the most likely age
or date of birth in a Bible. If the white folks died, or the Bible was
lost, their ages were also lost and this was counted as irrevocable,
not to be troubled about further. After all, ages are only needed at
rare intervals, when a census is being taken or for the even less

exacting requirement of an obituary and death certificate. With
the utmost casualness the matter of ages could thus be dismissed:
“I had all our ages in the Bible and one of my boys what got mar¬
ried tuk it and when I got it back so many of the leaves was tore
out I didn’t know it was a Bible and all the ages was gone.” Or:
“I don’t know my age. My Bible got burnt up and hit was in it.”

The importance attached by the younger people to the keeping
of one’s own age was one of the faint but important symbols of
independent status. A young woman who had been reared by her
grandmother from an infant said with some feeling: “The only
thing I hate about my grandma is she wouldn’t tell me my age.”
The old folks would observe that “people didn’t tell ages in dem
days lak dey do now,” and make no effort to alter the easier ar¬
rangement of relying upon their white folks to supply this infor¬
mation when necessary. This continued reliance was only one of
the numerous points of their dependent relationship. Occasionally
there would be exhibited courage sufficient to doubt the estimate,
even though made by their white folks, as in the case of Jennie
Smith who gave this account of her age: “I am about seventy-sev¬
en years old this last gone February. I am satisfied I’m older’n
this but that’s what the white folks gied me when I was freed, but
if I don’t disremember that is my sister’s age. When the war was
declared, and freedom come, I was nursing and working at the
white folks’ home. They just got us niggers mixed up. I remember
well when the people was drilling to free the slaves. That’s why
I know I’m older’n dat.”

Memories of Slavery

The former slaves have not only retained memories of their
earlier status, but have maintained a certain dignity and prestige
for themselves by contrasting these memories with the pretensions
to freedom of the younger generation. For these older ones it has
been a part of the technique of survival to rationalize the social
adjustments made. There are, at the same time, former slaves
who, with a certain defiance, refer to slavery as an ill which they
were fortunate and grateful to escape. This they do with vigor and

eloquence, but also with a becoming caution. There is enough spir¬
it in their recital of slave conditions, however, to set them apart
from some of their brethren who, like many of their masters, find
these memories glowing with increasing charm and romance as
time separates them from the period.

The older Negro families are, indeed, divided rather sharply in
their memories of slavery, and both groups have in turn passed
them along in both practice and philosophy to their own offspring.
Zack Ivey, for example, is one of the older heads and strong spirits
of the community. He was more frank than is the custom of Ne¬
groes to be in contrasting his present condition with that of slav¬
ery. He complained: “I done had a harder time since I been free
than when I was a slave. I never had such a hard time in my life
as I’m having now.” Then, with awareness of the implied treason
of this remark, he added, compromising: “I’m saying this for my¬
self. I ain’t saying hit for nobody else. I wish I had stayed a
slave.” There was to him nothing offensive in his attachment to
his master, particularly since his was a good master; besides, he
drew distinction from the very power and wealth of his owner.
“In slavery my master and mistress tuk care of me. I lived down
in the quarters but I was always up at the house. Them quarters
was ’ranged just like a garden. Here was a row and there was a
row, and up there was the white folks’ house. My mother had to
see atta all the chillun in the quarters ’cause they kept so much fuss.
I was small and light and done ’bout most as I pleased.”

One does not have to look far to see the lively survivals of the
early social attitudes in the present population which figure so
largely in the memory of Zack Ivey. For a most significant feature
of the culture of this group is the slow pace of its transformation.
Life was regimented for Zack Ivey but not unpleasantly. The ra¬
tions were especially memorable in the face of the dull monotony
of their present daily fare. “In slavery days,” he reminisced, “we
et peas, onions, hog head, liver, cow’s milk, butter, Irish potatoes,
and everything what grows in gardens. That’s why I’m here now.
I’m just living on the strenk of that. Hit’s the strenk of that
done kept me alive.” For Zack Ivey life was a simple, elemental

process of love-making, child-breeding, frolics, and religion, very
much as it is now in the community. “I had three chillun by my
first wife and fifteen by my second wife. We had frolics. We had
them in the white folks’ yard. The white folks made you play and
run and jump. Your feet an’ things had ter be washed and you
had ter be all clean and white ter set at table. We had guitars
and blowing quills. We had the best kinda time. The only thing
I didn’t like they kept me in my shirt tail so long. I thought I was
too big fer ter be in my shirt tail and ever’ time they come round
and tell me ter jump my shirt tail would fly up, and I’d say, ‘You
gotta put some pants on me.’ I was keeping company wid my lady
frien’, going cross the creek, and I looked and there my shirt tail
was a floating.”

The difference in opinion as well as in memories on the question
of slavery found frequent enough expression. So close was the
group in the ordinary routine of life, and so well known the opin¬
ions, that they would frequently take the form of debate through
the investigator.

Riny Biggers, a character of equal strength in the community,
without being informed of the views of Zack Ivey, began her own
reminiscences with a warning: “Don’t you believe no nigger when
he says he ruther be no slave. Things happen then too awful to
talk about. If they catch you with a pencil in your hand it would
be too bad. When de white folks’ chillun would come through wid
books from school by the quarters and dropped a piece of they
school paper and if dey seed you pick hit up dey would clare you
tryn’ to learn to read and write, and over Sunday for a month
you’d be put in a strait-jacket.”

The immediate difference between these two types could be
observed in the children of these old family heads. Riny Biggers
made her own children learn their letters under the threat and free
employment of a handy stick. When they had grown up and she
was no longer capable of having children of her own, she adopted
others and sent them to school in the same manner. Of Zack Ivey’s
eighteen children, five were dead; four had left the county for
Montgomery; two remained with him; of the whereabouts of the

others he had no knowledge. None of them had had more than a
few months of schooling, and the two who remained still lived with
him, one of them an unmarried daughter with four children.

Riny Biggers, taking advantage of the extended privilege of
her sex, was more aggressive about her freedom and made a fetish
of education, although she herself was illiterate. The high value of
literacy had been implanted in her in slavery as firmly as Zack
Ivey’s memory of the care-free days of frolics and food and court¬
ing. She was what one might call “race conscious.” She told her
children often the story of a figure who seemed to stand out in her
memory as the heroic one of slavery. “Red Ann,” as she was com¬
monly known, knew the secret of letters when she was bought by
Riny’s mistress. It was a trade-off as unethical as selling a blind
horse without confessing his defect. Red Ann’s literacy in this case
was her defect. Riny’s mistress bought Red Ann from a specu¬
lator but she did not know that she could read. She was called
“Red Ann” in contempt for nature’s presumption to endow a slave
with a swarthy Caucasian complexion and quite straight soft hair,
sometimes referred to as Titian. When in the presence of her mis¬
tress, or any white person, for that matter, Ann carried a blank,
uncomprehending stare. She would handle papers on which there
was writing without showing the slightest curiosity. Once securely
out of sight, she would read them and keep her intelligence to her¬
self. Later she began to read letters coming to the house and, be¬
coming still bolder, would show them to other slaves whom she
took into her confidence. They watched as she read, then one day
a slave, secretly jealous, whispered to her mistress Red Ann’s
secret. There was consternation confounded by unbelief. In a cul¬
ture which denied the ability of Negroes to read, it was easier to
believe as well as to wish that they could not. Suspicion grew and
she was questioned. Red Ann persisted that she could not read.
The mistress left notes around to trap her, but Red Ann wras too
clever. Finally, she wrote her mistress’ name to a pass and dis¬
appeared.

This secret power was a lasting lesson for Riny, and she ground
it into her own children from the day they were large enough to

understand. For that reason she was accounted the equivalent of
a radical in her society, and the variant fate of her children testi¬
fied to the conflict between her own determination and the pres¬
sure of environment. Of Riny’s first set there was one living and
two dead. The living child, now in his fifties, eventually shook off
the county, the state, and left the South forever. She knew only
that he had a family in Detroit and children in school somewhere.
Another son died at the age of ten. A daughter grew to woman¬
hood, married, and died in childbirth. Of the second set, one
daughter, Aggie, was living with her mother; a son, Arch, was
killed in a fight with a white man; and still another, Jerry, had
been away from home about fifteen years and had finally worked
his way through a school in South Carolina. Two other children
had died at early ages and there had been three miscarriages. With
her now was the second of the adopted children which she had
begun to rear. Her memories of slavery were fresh, no doubt from
frequent rehearsing:

My master’s people? Some of them masters would take they slaves
and lock ’em in the house all day and you couldn’t stick your head out
of the door. We could lay on our porch and hear ’em hollering and work¬
ing all night tel day. I seed ’em walk in sand tel they fell dead. Had been
me I would been fightin’ now. I come from the fightin’ class, but I’m too
old ter fight now. My master’s brother’s wife was so mean tel the Lord
sent a peal of lightenin’ and put her to death. She was too mean ter
let you go ter the well and git a drink of water, and God come long and
“squshed” her head open. One of the other masters was so mean he made
his slaves crow. Whenever he got ready ter go ter Prattville he had him
a chariot fixed up wid eight horses. Lak we settin’ here done been two
packs of hounds done passed chasing atta slaves and he had more slaves
runned away.

“ Salt-Water ’ Men

Another class of Negroes in relation to whom there is retained,
in the memory of the community, an active social distinction is the
“salt-water nigger.” They were the freshly imported Negroes from
Africa toward whom the Negro slaves felt a pronounced superiori¬
ty. Cass Stewart, now over eighty-five years of age, could remem¬
ber some of these. Said he: “I was wid de Africans. Dey couldn’t

understand what dey was saying deyselves. I seed dem salt-water
niggers down my home near Selma. I knowed a man down dere
working 25 acres, couldn’t work wid half of ’em ’cause when you
made one of ’em mad you made all of ’em mad.”

The older slaves kept themselves aloof from the African, partly
out of contempt and partly out of fear. In the community today
there are contemptuous references to certain families as springing
from “salt-water niggers.” This situation provides an unexpected
link with Africa which might indeed yield traces of other trans¬
planted culture traits.12

Old Farming Methods Surviving

The old people, despite differences of opinion on the matter of
slavery, retained numerous traits in common as a part of their
heritage from the institution. Most important among these was
the method of farming. Sam Thomas, still feebly active, despite
his nearly ninety years, and always able to raise some sort of crop,
made an observation on the development of agriculture. The
method they learned was for him the best method. He said: “The
way they farmed here then was a hoss ter de plow and a hoss ter
de hoe hand. They works dat way round here now . They had a
leader and all lumped together in one hand master.”

As a matter of fact, there has been practically no change in the
farming methods except on a few advanced farms. The layout of
the plantation is practically the same as it has always been. The
perennial tenants go to the commissaries for food, clothing, and
other essentials or get advances in small amounts of cash. The
larger the plantation, the greater the prestige of the planter. From
the importance of the planters the tenants draw their own social
importance.

This man what we rent from got a big plantation, and he got it filled
up, too. Lots of dem is renters and a lot of dem is jes workers by the day
for him. He got a little commissary up dere at dat big barn where you

12 One old resident, in quoting remembered expressions of these Africans, used terms
strikingly similar to the African West Coast pidgin English, which was all the more unusual
because West Coast pidgin is not common in the dialect of the Negroes in this part of the

South.

can buy what you want. Dey puts it down on the book when you buy
something. I jes tell de thing jes like it is. When you want a sack of flour
or anything you go up dere and get it, but you don’t have no money to
buy it with. De people last year ’vanced around $8.00 and $ 9.00 to de
plow. Long bout dis time last year we got a draw and no more. Course I
scuffles round here and works a little extra to keep from being worried
so much.

The man what owns dis place sold it and is living ’tween five and six

miles of Montgomery. Mr. - stays near Montgomery. His men

stays up yonder in the big house. He sold it to Mr. - . Mr. -

was better than Mr - . Mr. - never did ’vance anything.

Mr. - jes got tired of staying here and he sold to Mr. - . These

here people here is regular farmers. Dey get more land den anybody in
Alabama. Got about 700 and some odd acres I guess. They got a lot of
people on this place. I jes couldn’t tell you how many farmers is on dis
place. Dey is all back across in here and way back over yonder.

The acuteness of the struggle for a livelihood has issued from
the effort to produce enough from the constantly weakening soil
with the simple old tools of two generations ago. The reluctance
to change has been bound up with the decreasing importance of
the area itself as a cotton center, the increasing economic helpless¬
ness of the families, the high illiteracy, and the almost total ab¬
sence of money. Even if these were different, there would remain
to be overcome a group inertness and habituation to their status
which was notable near the beginning of their new era of freedom,
and about which the old people themselves remark in their stories
of the past. For years after their emancipation they not only were
unable to grasp the significance of their changed status, but auto¬
matically kept up the habits of earlier association in every detail
and in spite of the assurance by their “white folks” that certain
controls were no longer in operation.

Even atta we was free, the niggers wouldn’t believe it. They kept
going ter master and mistress atta passes to go off and they would say,
“Steve, I don’t give no more passes now, dem days is over; you is as free
as me.” The niggers couldn’t believe hit atta they heard hit. I’m tellin’
de truf. The niggers was still scared, too. You know the niggers and
white folks b’longed ter de same church, and went ter de same church.
The niggers would set behin’ de ’titions. The preacher would tell ’em
slavery was over and ter come on in the church, but they wouldn’t.

Then the white folks got scared dat dem niggers might kill ’em. Dat de
reason why niggers and white folks ain’t goin’ ter de same church now.
’Cause mattered not how the preacher would say tain’t no mo’ master
and mistress now come on inside, some of them niggers wouldn’t. They
stood outside by them windows wid day heads stickin’ in. Yes, honey,
I ’members dis all.

Physical Survivals of the Past

Memories of the past are reinforced by numerous physical fea¬
tures — the old and sagging cabins and the decaying splendor of the
big house, the rotting remains of the old plank road, and occasion¬
ally the untouched breastworks of the Civil War itself, which
changed their political status. Will Daniels reckoned that the
house in which he lived was ninety years old, and gave this ex¬
planation in support of his speculation:

There’s an old man ’round here who used to wait on Dr. - and

he’s about ninety years old. The house was here when he was a boy. Old
man Parker owned it in slavery times. The slave cabin was tore down
when I moved here. The young Missus comes up here to see it sometimes
now. She says she just likes to see the old place where she was raised.
She showed us the print of the man’s hand that built it. It’s right there
in the hall.

Stability

Year after year these families continue to live and move about
within the county, but rarely leaving it. The tenant turnover is
high. Their one outstanding means of asserting freedom is this
mobility, although within an extremely narrow range. Planters
can never tell which of their tenants will be with them the follow¬
ing year, but of one thing they can be fairly certain — that they will
not leave the county, and in time, will rotate, of their own choice,
back to the point of beginning. The past is thus kept ever alive,
since it is never seriously broken. This restlessness is expressed in
such statements as:

We moved here in 1925. Getting time to move now, ain’t it? We
been here too long now.

I just been here two months . I’ll just be here ’til the last of the

month and everything gets settlement.

\ O Co O "cL CL-O

We jest been moved out here from Montgomery this year, so my hus¬
band could get on his feet, but we expects ter move soon’s cotton time’s
over.

When people ain’t got no home they move back from one place to the
other.

We moved here from Shorter, but ’fore we went ter Shorter we lived
in La Place. We been farming all our lives ’cept two years when we was
in town.

The statistical evidence from the 612 families gives more exact¬
ness to these comments. About 60 per cent of the 400 husbands,
or male heads of the families, were born in Macon County. About

TABLE II

Birthplace of the Male and Female Heads of 612 Negro
Families in Macon County

Dead

Away

Border

States

Some

Other

Southern

State

Same

State

Same

Place

Neighbor¬

hood

Unknown

Total

Male heads of families .

Wives of female heads of

152

270

453

families .

354

407

34 per cent of these men were born elsewhere in the state of Ala¬
bama, and only about 5 per cent were born in other southern
states. In the case of the 579 wives, or female heads of families,
about the same proportions were born on the place or in the neigh¬
borhood. This seems to correspond roughly with the general im¬
mobility of the residents of the state. For the United States as a
whole, 67.2 per cent of the population were born in the state in
which they reside while for Alabama 87.5 per cent.

There were those who could point to the spot “where pappy was
sot free, right over yonder.” One old resident pointed his foot at
the stove beside which his parent had died on the very plantation
where he had served his master as a slave. The second generation
was there, renting from the family of the former owner of his

father. Ann Weaver is living in the cabin given her by her white
folks when they moved to Montgomery. “It’s mine tel I die,” she
said with triumph. “She went down ter de courthouse and had it
done, so dat effen she die fo’ me they can’t take it.” One resident
confided: “I’ve never been out of the state. Reason is, I wouldn’t
know what way to go.”

The Tradition of Dependence

For those still living in the county there is, it would appear, one
unfailing rule of life. If they would get along with least difficulty,
they should get for themselves a protecting white family. “We
have mighty good white folks friends, and ef you have white folks
for your friends, dey can’t do you no harm.”

How this practical policy, so clearly a carry-over from the past,
can extend to controlling advice on the most intimate matters is
apparent in the domestic experience of Josh Walker, who sought
the judgment of his white folks on the merits of his last wife.

This last wife I had, she was a blizzard, ’cause she was no count no way.
Hers was her way and my way was my way, and she quit me and carried
off all the money I had. I had done saved $80. She carried hit all off.
That was six years ago. She was too old ter draw water and ter cook,
but she had the devil in her. Hit tuk four men to carry her away. She
went off. Said I’d be wid my chillen an’ she gwine ter hers. White folks
tole me that I better let that hussy go and atta she left I jes shouted.

The sense of dependence has crystallized into a sort of practical
philosophy: “You know when you get where you can’t behave
yourself you better move. You got to be loyal, ’cause you know
this is a white man’s country.” And again: “You can’t do nothing
with white folks agin you.” Nor should it be supposed that all of
this dependence upon the whites is based upon fear. There is a
solid and sympathetic paternalism among some of the white plant¬
ers toward their Negro dependents which is felt by them. Max
Wheeler, for example, was a stolid, illiterate, but hard-working
head of a large family who experienced the perennial difficulty of
breaking even. Year after year he went to his white planter friend.
Times were hard in 1931. Max explained sympathetically: “He

said he had so many folks on his place to feed, it was hard, but he
wanted to try to give all of us a little feed.” It worried Mandy
Williams that she was “so sympathetic with white people.” Sarah
Owens, now sixty-eight, achieved her own freedom from the sense
of dependence by claiming her white folks as her own. “Honey,
them’s my own good white folks. Done had me [in the family]
since I been three weeks old and had my mother before me.”
Booker T. Washington, in a memorial address at Hampton Insti¬
tute in 1893 on General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, was, no
doubt, thinking of his neighbors back of Tuskegee when he as¬
serted with vigor: “The greatest injury that slavery did my peo¬
ple was to deprive them of that sense of self-dependence, habits of
economy, and executive power which are the glory and distinction
of the Anglo-Saxon race.”

The older members of the community who find ample satisfac¬
tion in the old culture are aware of some queer difference mani¬
festing themselves in the attitude of younger members who have
been away from the section. Caleb Humphries went to Mont¬
gomery to try to adjust a matter of compensation due on the
death of one of his sons in France. He tells the story now of how
he was sitting in the Red Cross Office in Montgomery when a
white man, whom he promptly assumed to be the governor of
Alabama, came in. “He was tall as a tree, and I said ‘Good-morn¬
ing, Master’ — so uster slavery I still say hit. They [other Negroes]
stopped me from hit ’cause dey say you don’t hafta treat white
folks like dat dese days.”

The community is being affected at present by at least four fac¬
tors: migration of a portion of the younger generation away to
other states and to the North; return of a small number of younger
members who have been sent away to school in Tuskegee and
Montgomery; the gradually increasing literacy of the group, be¬
ginning with the children; and the introduction of certain pro¬
grams of welfare from the outside. The interplay of these new in¬
fluences with the old habits of the community may be observed in
some measure against the background of the present structure and
functioning of the Negro family in this area.

THE PEOPLE

Father, mother, and their children are regarded by sociologists
as constituting not only the elementary family but the fundamen¬
tal social group. It is the universal pattern, and based on this
primary structure, which, in our culture, places the father most
commonly at the head of the group, principles are formulated
regulating marriage, defining legitimacy, and determining what is
respectable, even moral. The families of this area are, by this
standard, considerably atypical. In the first place, the role of the
mother is of much greater importance than in the more familiar
American family group. This has some explanation in the slave
origins of these families. Children usually remained with the moth¬
er; the father was incidental and could very easily be sold away.
The role of the mother could be extended to that of “mammy” for
the children of the white families.

The position of the Negro woman always gave her greater ad¬
vantage in dealing with their white masters than the Negro men.
Historically she has been the controlling influence over the chil¬
dren. Moreover, in the present economic arrangement, her earn¬
ing power is only a fraction less than that of the male, and as a
rule more sustained and dependable. She, thus, in large part es¬
capes one of the most powerful factors influencing adversely the
status of women generally in the American society.

A second factor marking a difference is the free grouping of rela¬
tives and adopted children in the households. Although the house¬
holds kept themselves strictly separated (92 per cent of the fami¬
lies or households lived under separate roofs), there were 30 per
cent of the families with one to six relatives living with them. The
families with children were the ones most likely to add relatives to
their numbers. Over half of the families had other relatives in the
household.

In the third place, just about two-thirds of the families could be
considered normal in the sense of having both parents living or
living together with the children. To this circumstance is added
another factor of the almost indiscriminate gathering under the

same roof of half-brothers and half-sisters from various marriages,
and of adopted children taken freely into the home. The makeup
of households which sociologically may be regarded as families
often constitutes a confusing picture. Mary Grigsby, of Harda¬
way, is head of one of the oldest families of the county. She gives
an account of the present structure of her household. It contains
some of her own children, her children’s children, and half-broth¬
ers’ and sisters’ natural and legal children. It is, however, as stable
as most of the others. As a matter of fact, it represents a sort of
selection. Those members who find themselves too violently at
variance with the codes by which the family is regulated move out
and away, or are expelled.

My mamma she said I was born on ole man Chum Crack’s place on
Boyd’s farm. After I married I left ’em, but I been here nigh on about
forty years [in the neighborhood]. I been on this spot nigh about thirty
years. My mamma died this year. She were about one hundred years
old. This is my son and grandson. One of my sons he married and live
over yonder, but this grandson lives with me.

Charlie [grandson] was born here. My daughter were in Birmingham,
but she come on here. She went back for a while and stay with her hus¬
band, then she sent Charley back and give him to me.

Richard was born in Montgomery, and Dave, my son who is Richard’s
daddy, give him to me when he was three years old.

Sam Burkes is Charley’s father. I don’t know where he at. His home,
though, in Birmingham. Mary Burkes, my daughter, and Charley was
married, though, right down there.

Lena Parsons was Richard’s mother. She and Dave wasn’t married.

I was the mother of fifteen children in all. I got six livin’. Some come
live, but didn’t live no time, yet three got to be big chillen walkin’ ’bout
fo’ dey dies. One boy got to be eighteen years old. He had that fever
and from that spasms and spells and from the spells he fell in the fire and
got burnt and never got over it. The other two just died with the fever.

Charlie [another son], he goin’ on three years old when he died with the
fever, too. With the others I go about five or six months and I lost ’em.
I jest keep a losten em.

That the last one I saved right there [pointing to another son}. I had
to work to save him. I had to go to the doctor. I got so weak I couldn’t
hold ’em.

3°

Gregory wasn’t the father of ’em all. He was the father of Janie and
David [the oldest boy in Montgomery]. Robert Pitts is the father of the
other four, Mary, Richard, Jessie, and Archie. I was married to Gregory
by David Bracks. I wasn’t never married to Pitts.

A further fact about this community is that in almost half of the
families one or more of the members of the original family group
were away in other parts of the county or state, or in northern
states. Of the 612 families there were only 317 with no members
away, or about half, and those include the families with no children
at all. In 295 families there were from 1 to 10 members absent.
One hundred and twelve families had 1 person away; 70 had 2 per¬
sons away, 40 had 3 persons away, and 61 had 4 or more persons
away. Moreover, those absent members when they leave the state
are often cut off completely from the parent stock.

In the case of the unlettered offspring, or even mates of the re¬
maining family heads, the ties are sometimes carelessly allowed to
break. It not infrequently happens, however, that children who
leave push forward their education and become consciously sepa¬
rated by a vast cultural chasm. This had occurred in the case of
the family in which the mother had remarried and given birth to
three children by a second husband. Her two sons by a first mar¬
riage had left the county and begun their own education, which
carried them through the State Normal School in Orangeburg,
South Carolina. In her dreary two-room cabin, with one large bed
as the only furniture, the fly-specked photographs of these two
boys in collegiate cap and gown hung like strange, alien figures
from the newspaper-covered walls. She did not know where they
were or what they were doing. Nor had she seen them since they
left. These photographs remained as almost mocking mementos of
a separation as complete as death. Another family in similar cir¬
cumstances had a son away who has become the head of a Negro
educational institution, but who is likewise lost to them. Thus the
community in throwing off its members escapes both the irritation
of its disturbing miscreants and the elevating influence of its cul¬
tural misfits at the other extreme of the scale.

Size of Families

There were 1,344 children in these 612 families. Sixty-nine of
these children were under one year of age and constituted 2.7 per
cent of the 2,482 persons in all the families. This was higher than
for the county as a whole. This age group constitutes 2.2 per cent
of the entire population. Two hundred and twenty-nine of these
children were under five years of age. This was 9 per cent of the
entire group, or slightly less than the figure for the county as a
whole, which was 10. o per cent. Six hundred and thirty-two of the
children were between the ages of five and fourteen and constituted
25.4 per cent of the 2,482 persons in these 612 families. This was

TABLE III

Number of Families with Stated Numbers of Children

Children

Families

6l2 .

189

127

slightly higher than the figure for the county as a whole, which was
23.9 per cent in 1920. If we take into consideration all the fami¬
lies, there are, on an average, 2.2 children to a family. But 189 of
these families had no children, and if the average number of chil¬
dren for these families with children is calculated, there are 3.1
children to a family. Table III shows the distribution of these
families according to the number of children.

Types of Family Structure

The environment has produced not one but many family types
which, however, have numbers of traits in common. It is not im¬
mediately apparent just what have been the predominant influ¬
ences in shaping their differences. There are families which are
fairly stable and adjusted to the environment and its social codes.
They have a distinct background, certain family traditions,, a
consciousness of integration, and they are sensitive to certain

patterns of respectability which represent the more reflective
moral sentiments of the group. These families appear among both
the educated and the uneducated classes of the population and in
varying proportions among owners, tenants, and croppers.

The frequency in this community of the artificial or quasi¬
families seems to warrant their classification as a type. They have
the semblance of a normal and natural family, and function as one,
but the members of the group are drawn into it by various circum¬
stances rather than being a product of the original union. There
are, again, those families which, though not bound by the formal
sanctions, are held together for years by the strength of affectional
ties or the satisfactory character and mutual convenience of the
arrangement. Multiple marriages are fairly common. Intransient
family groups seem to be a product of the environment and are
held together over periods by economic and other considerations of
convenience. And just as these family forms are reflections of the
environment, there have been developed physical adjustments
with regard to both remarriage and the disposition of children.
Equally important are the families whose organization and senti¬
ments, though in accord with more advanced ideals of other com¬
munities, are in constant conflict with the dominant patterns of
both the white and the Negro local community. Finally, there are
those family groups which reflect definite disorganization as a re¬
sult of the disintegration of traditional controls, and are yet un¬
able or unwilling to adjust themselves to newer patterns of rela¬
tions. All of these are affected in some degree by the social and
cultural transition which the community is experiencing.

The numerical distribution of these types of families can be sug¬
gested in these figures: in the 612 households there were 404 mar¬
ried couples or couples living together in common-law association.
There was no male head in 152, or 25 per cent of these families.
The male parent was either away or dead. The wife or female head
of the household was absent from 33 of the families. About two-
thirds of the families were normal family groupings. In 231 of the
404 couples married or living together the man and woman were
each married or in marital association for the first time. In 24

families the husband had been married more than once. In 74
families both man and woman had been married more than once.
There were only 2 divorced persons who had not remarried. The
community afforded no spinsters and extremely few bachelors.

Stable Old Families with Strong AJfectional
Ties and a Family Tradition

The Haygood family was rooted in slavery, but father and
mother, both illiterate, were married and had lived together over
fifty years, reared children, established a family tradition of a
sort, accumulated a little property, and retained their affection for
each other. Ellen Haygood spoke thus of her background and re¬
lations with her husband until his very recent death:

Yes, indeed, I may be old but I remember everything. I was born
during slavery. Dem sho’ was bad times. If the niggers hadn’t been
liberated by Abe Lincoln we’d still be the white folks’ niggers. The way
them folks used to beat us was shameful. My white folks want rich.
They was just good livers and they want so bad. I ain’t nebber forgotten
my young mistress. She had the longest nose you ever seen, but she was

sweet. Her name was S - . All the niggers on the place called her

“Miss Sis” and when I sees her now I calls her “Miss Sis.” She’s done
got powerful old but she still lives right on the old place over yonder
near Honey Cup. Yes’m right here in Shorters. Folks would raise the
fence and put your end on one side and your head on the other and
beat and beat them niggers. I was the onliest little nigger on the place
when freedom come. The Yankees come through and said slavery’s done
gone. Child, the niggers got to yelling and whooping all over the place.
Some of ’em got kept in bondage as long as four years after freedom. The
white folks jest wouldn’t loose us. Abe Lincoln touched a pen for the
sign of freedom but all the niggers didn’t know. The Rebels didn’t tell
us until some good white folks let the cat out of the bag. My husband he
was off in the war. That was Jim. He done told me so much I ain’t neb¬
ber gonna forget. He got discharged right on Peach Street in Atlanta.
Dere’s his picture on the wall. I gits here in my bed some night and puts
on the flashlight on the picture and says, “I’m still all alone Jim — still
your Ellen.” I know it ain’t gonna be long now ’fore I goes to him. He
sho’ was a good husband. He used to cook and help me but we was mar¬
ried fifty-six years and I ain’t missed cooking his vittels but once. He
got mad then and hit me . Then he was sad and said, “Scraps (used

to call me Scraps), I hain’t nebber gonna hit you no mo’ long’s I live,”
and he sho didn’t. I loved that man.

The week ’fore he died he said, “Ellen, git my tax papers and all the
pension papers. I’se gonna fix things so if I die you won’t have no trouble.
I’se an old disable soldier and I’se gonna take care of you.” Well, we
signed papers ’n’ all. Then he paid Miss Jessie $1.00 to come here and
write all our names in the Bible in ink. See, I couldn’t write and Jim
couldn’t but he’d been carryin’ all that in his head, and he knew if any¬
thing ever happen and it weren’t wrote down, it be hard for me. He was
blind, too. Got blind from cooking so much. All that smoke was too
much for his eyes. Well, I come nigh going blind too. Jim paid £100 for
my eyes to get better. A white lady come here and tended like she was
gonna do a heap for us and said she’d send some glasses but she ain’t done
nothin.’ After freedom I went to school ’till the one-legged man wrote
me I couldn’t go no more without no money an’ we ain’t had nothin’
then. All we got we just cummulated. When my chilluns married I
gave each one two sheets, three pillow cases, one half-dozen cups and
saucers, and a piece of furniture. I treated ’em all the same. Just had
to save to git all this, an’ if anybody knows how to save and scrape, I
do. I gits all the slop ready for the chilluns and it don’t take much the
way I fixes it. I done lost $700 in this Tuskegee bank when hit closed.
I’se been saving that a long time and it sho’ got me bad.

My husband died with the kidney trouble. He got drawed sores all on
his legs. I got ’em now. Wait, I’m gonna show you. The children want
me to go to Birmingham to the doctor. Dere’s a doctor there who can
look plumb through you and see everything. Spects my heart is like
this cause everything I got is dead but me and three chillun. I done had
to stop breeding for six years on account of bad misfortune. I got a milk
leg and a risen breast. The doctor is scared to lance it.

Tain’t easy for me to keep up with all my spenses. I miss Jim for
that. He sho’ could figure. Just two years ago next month he died. I
make lines like this .... for dollars and circles for nickels. I send some
of the money up North to the chilluns, but I done got careless and don’t
keep it up.

Families with Strong Maternal Dominance and
with Specific Moral Codes

Frank Grice is forty-nine and his wife thirty-seven, and with
their seven children, ranging in ages from eight to twenty years,
they live in a five-room cottage which they are attempting to buy.
All but one of the children are living at home. The house is old,

has never been painted, has half of the windows missing, and is, in
the words of Mrs. Grice, “ ’bout to fall down.” They are cotton
farmers and for the past three years have tried to make a living
from thirty acres of questionable cotton land which they rent.
Last year they raised two bales of cotton, both of which went to
the white man from whom they had purchased a mule with which
to do their plowing. Besides the cotton, however, Frank Grice
raised three loads of corn, two hundred bundles of fodder, fifteen
gallons of syrup, and three banks of potatoes, and this provided
the food for the family and their total income in kind for the year.

Jerry, next to the oldest boy, is the wanderer, and left home
three years ago. They do not know where he is, and indeed have
not heard from him since he left. But the family stands out as a
distinct type in this neighborhood. Neither of the parents can read
or write and none of the children has passed through the fourth
grade in school. The parents wanted the children to be educated
but even education was less important than “living decent.” The
mother is the stronger element of the family, and has pronounced
notions about morality and respectability. All the children but
one, Jerry the wanderer, live quietly in the community and in
marked social isolation. The attitude of the family is unique and
important for its revolt against commonplace practices in the
community.

Yes, I’s the mother of seven children and every last one of dem be¬
longs to Frank Grice. I ain’t stuck on dese stolen chillun; dat’s why I
married in my mother’s house ’fore I broke my virtue. I just got ’oman-
ish and nothin’ would do me but to marry. Out of all of dem, I ain’t got
but one bad un. He ain’t just say bad, but he wanders away. Been away
now ’bout three year, and the last time I heard from him he was in Union
Springs. No, he don’t get into no trouble, ’cept last year he got into
trouble for carryin’ a gun. He didn’t shoot nobody, but hits ’gainst de
law to have one. He got out of it all right because we have mighty good
white friends.

No, hit’s been sometime now since I’s been to church. In my condi¬
tion I can’t go. I’m lookin for the baby in September. I’s so shame to
go to church lookin like dis. You know yourself everybody would be
lookin’ at me with my stomach so big. Maybe if I could get me a loose
dress I’d go. I ’speck this will be my last time to come around. Eliza

Rose, the midwife, tells me the time when my last child was born that
I would have one more time to come, but she said, too, dey would be
twins. I wish they would come twins, and den I knows I would be done
for all time, ’cause I’s just about tired of having chillun. Every time
I look out de door I’s like dis. I’s so thankful for one thing: my oldest
boy is such a good child.

Me and my family don’t never git into no trouble. De peoples right
up dere next to me stole two pigs last year. Dey can’t git along wid no¬
body. No, I ain’t have no fuss wid ’em, ’cause I ain’t see no use. I just
pray to the Lord and he takes care of everything.

Quasi-families: Female Heads of Assembled Families

The number of households with old women as heads and large
numbers of children, although of irregular structure, is sufficiently
important to be classed as a type requiring some explanation.
The oldest generation is the least mobile; the children of these in
the active ages move about freely and often find their own im¬
mediate offspring, while young, a burden, as they move between
plantations. Marriages and remarriages bring increasing numbers
of children who may be a burden to the new husband or a hin¬
drance to the mother if she must become a wage-earner. The sim¬
plest expedient is to leave them with an older parent to rear. This
is usually intended as a temporary measure, but it most often ends
in the establishment of a permanent household as direct parental
support dwindles down. The responsibility is accepted as a mat¬
ter of course by the older woman and she thereafter employs her
wits to keep the artificial family going. Charlotte Harris, in the
subcommunity of Sambo, has such a family. When first visited
she was in the field hoeing. On the way back to her cabin, Jose¬
phine, a small and grotesquely deformed girl-child of about twelve
years of age, came reeling unsteadily down the path. She was
groaning, moving her lips rapidly, and uttering unintelligible
sounds. “She can’t talk,” explained the, old woman. Then calling
to the other children in the rear of the cabin, she commanded,
“Come here, you chillun, and git de baby.” Two of them, a few
years older, appeared and led the child away. The old woman then
began to talk as she cooled herself:

I don’t know ’zackly how old I’m is. ’Bout fifty I guess. I ’member
when slavery time was. The old marster uster have lunch up ter the big
house every Sunday and call all his little niggers up to the house. No,
they ain’t been all one family. He had lots of niggers and he liked to
show his friends how many little niggers he had. I wan’t big enough to
remember much.

At this time Josephine came back to the house and attempted to
get upon the steps, but could not lift her foot high enough. The
children helped her up the steps. She went into the house and
came back with an armful of rags, then sat on the porch, staring,
groaning, sucking her tongue, and hugging the rags.

I don’t know ’zackly how old Josephine is. I think she ’bout nine
years old. She old ’nough to ’menstrate. She kinder like a young lady.
Looka here, got a little breast coming. You know she old. She is my
granddaughter’s child, who died the other day. Janie Lou and Ethel her
chillun too, but I been had Josephine all her life. Dese other two just
come since she dead. I ain’t know ’zackly what she died with. Charlotte
died in the hospital in Montgomery. Left five chillun. James and the
other boy live over dere with his father. Dis one here is ’nother child,
belong to my other grandchild. Charlotte named for me. The doctor said
she had an abscess in her stomach.

Josephine ain’t right bright. She ain’t crazy, though. Been like dat all
her life. She don’t never git into no trouble. She burned her foot once
but she ain’t fall in the fire. She stepped on the hot coal. When I went
to the burial last week she wouldn’t go with me. I paid my brother Dan
to stay here with the child ’cause I hates ter leave her here alone, but
old people so contrary.

No, Josephine ain’t foolish. Her mother said ’fore she was born that
she stayed on the creek fishing too long. One day when she had been
fishing, on her way back home somebody put a ground hog in the road.
Somebody killed the ground hog and laid it on a sheet for her to pass, and
it skeered her to death. Then when the baby was borned she started to
walk but she ain’t walk, just crawled like a turtle. Tried to talk; says
“mama” sometimes. She always plays wid rags and sticks; gathers ’em
up in a pile.

My husband been dead. I don’t know how come he died. When he
died he jest hollered. He was a good Christian, though. Said he had
pains and all the misery was in his head. Lie went so naked I said he
died with the pneumonia. He didn’t wear no clothes atall. Yes, he had
plenty of clothes, but too stingy to wear ’em. I don’t care how hot it is,

clothes made for the flesh. During cotton-picking time I talked to him
but it ain’t do no good. Had good clothes, den laid down and died and
left ’em all here. After he died I called in the little boy and gie’d him a
whole sack of clothes. I’d a worn ’em out to rags myself if I’d had dat
many. Mine all full o’ holes, but I does pretty well.

I gits the house and patch for nothing. John Henry Davis, my grand¬
daughter’s husband over there, lets me stay here-. -I:he’pS‘him-s6me wid
his farm and then I takes care o’ the chillun. She -gives me $2.00 a week,
sometimes rations. Davis furnishes my food ’cause all of ’em been eating
here since my granddaughter dies.

I plum’ out of all the ’cieties now. Susie Williams was the president.
I’ll have to join some others ’cause my overcoat [coffin] cost too much. I
was b’long to the Home Mission. Just throw my moriey a\va'y j-oming the
Union Aid. I hate to lose all dat money. Got to work now to -pay the
$30 to the overseer. He buried my husband. I’ll work till the Lord calls
me, ’cause I ain’t paid the overseer back yet. He wouldn’t take my
cow, ’cause he told me my cow was my living. He sure was good not to

take my cow. The church give me $$.oo. Mr. - said he would

give me a chance. He wanted me to live on his place but I didn’t ’cept
the offer ’cause I mighta taken sick and had nobody to wait on me. I
come over here to be near my granddaughter after my husband died;
and then she died.

The Red Cross he’ped me once. Me an my brother Dan went over
dere. The white folks was over der figuring and my brother looks like he
wanted to talk imposin’ talk. They was handing out letters to the folks,
but they ain’t had none for me. The white man got fretted so I pulled

Dan’s coat tail. Miss - told us not to blame her ’cause she only had

letters for the people what give her they names.

I had one granddaughter to die with pellagacy. No, she ain’t died here.
She stayed here all last winter then went to her husband in Montgomery
and then died.

Quasi-families : Male Heads of Transient Families with

Shifting Family Members

Another and curious type of family is that in which the male
head remains constant while various other types of relationship,
including a succession of wives and their children by him, shift
around him. The children and grandchildren and wives who fail
to accommodate themselves to the pattern drift out and away, or
are thrown off while others remain, constituting essentially a fami-

ly organization. An example of this type is the family of Grants.
The husband, who in this case is the pivotal figure, is fifty-two and
his present wife thirty-eight. Besides them there are three chil¬
dren: Lulu Harris, eighteen, the unmarried daughter of the mother
and her two-year-old child; and two sons of James Grant, by
other wives, twenty- two and fifteen years old, respectively. He
owns a ‘small twp-rodm frame house. In point of organization there
is no difference between such an adjusted type of family and a
natural* qne.y It Js<r perhaps, even more efficient when pointed
toward producciye^ends — a circumstance which lends cohesion to
the natural 'family-., As a matter of fact, in spite of its transient
nature, the family, changes are, realistically viewed, little different
from those which, occur in course of the growth of children. What
is conspicuously lacking is a family tradition, and this lack is not,
incidentally, wholly confined to the transient family.

I’m about fifty-two years old, but I don’t remember how long I’ve
been living here in this county. It’s been so far back. I just go by what
the folks say. They say I was a little boy when I come here.

That’s my grandchild, Lilly Mae’s child. Will Jackson is the father.
He don’t live here. You know just about how it come here. Lilly is my
wife’s first husband’s child. He somewhere. She got a divorce. I mean
she didn’t but her husband did.

Yes, I got a divorce in Union Springs for my wife. Mrs. Murray, the
lady we was working for, got the divorce, and I ain’t know how much it
cost. This is my fourth wife. The first one died in Mississippi. I heered
that she died and they fetched her back home in Mississippi. I ain’t leave
the second one; she got away from me. The third one, I ain’t know where
she is, and there is the fourth one right over there. I ain’t got no divorce
from none of them. I got two sons and a daughter done left home. One
son left home around the war when the people got all stirred up. I don’t
know where he is. My other son and daughter, I don’t know where they
is neither.

Stable N on-legal Unions

Families cohere over a long period with all the semblance of
stability, but without the legal sanctions. In the Johnson family
are: Will Johnson, fifty-three; Mary Lucas, his common-law wife,
thirty-five; Annie Lee, fifteen; Willie Lee, eight; Alice, five; Ma-

mie, three; Thomas, two; and Salina, five months. Two other chil¬
dren died in infancy, and two of the father’s children by a previous
connection had been away in Montgomery about a year. The moth¬
er also has one girl from another unsanctioned alliance. Two of the
children in the present household are able to work. The parents are
unmarried, but this omission seems relatively unimportant. The
arrangement is one of mutual convenience and desire, and has sur¬
vived shocks sufficient to provoke permanent separation and di¬
vorce. Mary Lucas was muscular, large fisted, self-reliant, and not
afraid to “hit the sun” in the field. Carelessness was added to
poverty in their household and the children were unusually dirty
and ragged. Will Johnson was vigorous but older. He had a heavy
tangled beard, and one eye was missing. He would sit with his
hand over his face and his evident self-consciousness suggested
that the injury was not an old one. The mother spoke first:

He is the father of all dese chillun. No, we ain’t married. I ain’t never
been married. I’m the mother of seven chillun. The other one ain’t here.
She is a girl. Ethel Harris is her name. She married now and lives over
there in Hardaway somewhere. Dave Gregory is her father, and he is in
Montgomery. I got two chillun dead. One died when it was a day old
and the other one a few hours. Both of dem come too soon. Both of ’em
was born alive with the eyes open. I knows they was alive ’cause they
both cried. I fell out de wagon with the first one, and ain’t nothin’
wrong that I knows of wid the second one.

Man: I been knowing her [Mary Lucas] a long time.

Woman: I was raised up under him. He lived ’bout half a mile from
me. My mother knowed his mother ’fore she dies. They been well ac¬
quainted.

Man: Yes, I’s been married once, and my wife, her name was Mary
Hunter ’fore we married and then she named Mary Johnson, live now in
Montgomery. Had two chillun and they with her in Montgomery. I
don’t know how long they been gone. I thought of marryin’ Mary once.
Just as soon as I git able I goin’ to get married. May be a good while and
it may not.

Woman: I likes him all right.

Man: I likes her better than any other woman in a way [speaking
very hesitatingly ]. She understands the way we gits along. We done
talked this thing over .

The last time I went to the doctor it was fer my eye. I went to

Dr. - and he charged me $24. It been ’bout three years ago. Dat

woman over dere hit me in it.

Woman: Dat what he say. I have to say like he say, and he said like
it was. He hit me the fust lick. If he hadn’t hit me I wouldn’t a hit him.
I hit him wid a stick. I didn’t mean to hit him in the eye. Tried to git
around it. Didn’t mean to hit him in the face, let ’lone his eye.

N on-agricultural Families

Some of the male heads of families are able to let their wives
stay at home. The arrangement is easier where the man is en¬
gaged in work other than farming. Albert O’Neal is a laborer in a
log mill, earning seven dollars a week. He has held this job for
seven years, and he makes a point of keeping his wife at home.
They have been married eight years and seem happy, although
the wife has recently developed a keen interest in education, and
confessed that if she were not married she would be going to school
somewhere. Her husband is a hard-working man who seems to live
for the happiness and comfort of his young wife. But she is bored

with the life of the community. Said she:

I love my husband but it seems like he has such a hard time keeping up
his family. I married in 1923. I was going ter school and my father had
died and I had ter take care of myself. My mother just died last year.
She had pellagacy. I stayed with my godmother in Milstead. I never
did stay with my mother. She left and went ter Louisiana and never did
return. She left papa. She never could git along. I met my husband in
Milstead and we married in Godmother’s house. We done been going
tergether when we married ’bout three years. I uster like the farm all
right tel they wasn’t gittin’ nothin’ for cotton.

We would be living in town but my husband can’t git nothin’ ter do
up there. I gits tired out here sometimes. I wish I was in town. I’m
tired of picnics and suppers and ball games. That’s ’bout all we hafta do.
My husband goes ter work wid sunrise ever’ morning and works tel dark.
I git up ’fo day and cooks his breakfast. He don’t come back home ter
dinner ’cause hits so far. Hits ’bout seven miles from here. He comes home
’bout dark, half dead. Then we eat supper and ’round a hour he’s sleep.

Stable Legal Unions

Domestic relations are rarely ever continually peaceful in the
households, but the real test of the union is the ability to sustain

the shocks of marital strife without following the easier path to
separation. The Keys have been married twenty-seven years and
have never separated. Their two sons and a daughter-in-law live
with them in the household. Cotton farmers all, they raised not
only three bales (1,270 lb.) of cotton which they sold for cash at
eight cents a pound, but also 200 bushels of peas and 27 gallons of
syrup. Together they raised chickens, had seven hogs, and, what
is most important, have been buying their home for the past six
years.

We been married twenty-seven years and ain’t never parted. We
fight and scratch and I stay right here. He has never fought me. I get
mad, throw chairs, and stay home, ’cause if I ever left I would never

come back . We done lost much money in lodges, and it’s been so

long I can’t remember. My husband was a member of the American
Workmen and I use to be a member of the Sons and Daughters of Job.
The man what organized it called hisself the Grand Debit.

I’s had two miscarriages. I toted some wood under my arm and
mashed its head.

Disorganized Legal Unions

The influence of exposure to the city of one parent, while the
other remains at home is marked in another type. In a more gen¬
eral sense, there is revealed a family organization in contact both
with the culture of this isolated section and with certain externals
of the culture of the city. In the family of Robinsons the organiza¬
tion remained stable as long as the husband remained in the coun¬
ty. Then he got a job as a section hand on the railroad and even¬
tually got passes to town. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson have been mar¬
ried about eighteen years and have eight children, including the
twins, Isaac and Isaiah. There have been four stillbirths. The
mother comments on her family:

Mary stays here wid us. She jest started here Friday. She and her
sister’s husband can’t get along, and she and her sister neither. Bama
ain’t no good. She named after me. She sick all the time wid her eyes,
and I jest keeps her home. I don’t rent. They jest let me stay in here;
as long as they got work fer me ter do I work.

The children done all stopped school ’cause they had ter help take
care of theyselves. I couldn’t support ’em by myself. I is a day laborer

and makes 50 cents a day. Mariah works by the day and makes 50 cents
a day to help. Lizzie [the oldest girl] ain’t here. She is in Detroit. She
runned away and married and went there. She sent us some money but
hit was stole out the letter. I got the letter but didn’t seed no money.
I sho’ didn’t like hit fer her ter git married.

We owes this man, and he gives us two $$.oo a week for working, and
he takes half of it and we have ter live off the rest. I didn’t have nobody
ter help me and I had ter go down there ter git stuff ’nuf ter live off at
the end of the fall. My husband left us a year this July. Say after they
laid him off the railroad he couldn’t find no job ter do and he wasn’t
going ter work on no farm. He worked on the railroad with the Phillips
gang, and when they cut him off he jest went ’bout his business. I aint’
heard of him, but the last concern I heard of him he was in Montgomery,
and I knowed that ’bout all the far he could get. I ain’t going ter look
fer dat man. He might have some rotten woman there who might jump
on me. I’m jest going ter stay here and do the best I can. We was mar¬
ried in 1914, the fifteenth of July. He was an awful gambler and sold
ever’ thing he could git his hands on. He even sold my clothes and the
cows we had. I stayed wid him ’cause I cared for him. I uster worry
over him, but I don’t think ’bout him now. Better leave this marrying
business alone, Honey, ’cause these men will git you a house full of chillun
den up and leave you.

The mother and all the children were barefooted; and far into the
day the beds in the two-room cabin were unmade, the bedding
sticky and black with dirt, piled in the center of a corn-shuck mat¬
tress.

Stable Families with Advanced Standards

There is the type of family which in organization and sentiment
is out of harmony with its local environment. It takes its pattern
and social codes from other and more advanced areas. While the
family lives in the community, the members take but small part
in its life. They are, however, not isolated even though contacts
with the outside world are limited and rare. They are usually own¬
ers of both their homes and their farms, and are not dependent
upon the prevailing economic system for their support or their
ideals. Their homes are conspicuously out of place as Negro homes

and are readily mistaken by the stranger for the dwellings of one
of the white planters. There is usually a reason for their remaining
in the locality, and some extraordinary circumstance out of the
line of normal development responsible for their independence.

The Hennings were born in Macon County and have lived in
their present home for nineteen years. The father is fifty, the
mother fifty-two, and there are three children — twenty-seven,
twenty-five, and seventeen, respectively. Neither parent has been
married before, and all of their children are with them at home.
The five-room house is a frame cottage, well built. They own a
small automobile and a piano, and subscribe to a daily and a week¬
ly paper. The father is a machinist in the L. and N. Shops in
Birmingham and comes home every two months for a week-end.
All the children have been sent away to school: two to the Ala¬
bama State College in Montgomery and one to Fort Valley in
Georgia. The living-room of the house is furnished in conventional
style with duofold, bookcases (containing some two hundred or
more volumes), and a phonograph. On their farm they raised dur¬
ing the year sixty bushels of corn, six and one-half bales of cotton,
and a considerable quantity of peas, potatoes, and peanuts. They
kept a budget and had exact figures on income and expenditures.

The circumstances enabling this family to maintain a cultural
level above that of the majority in this community are as follows:
A grandfather, who had been an adventurous migrant, found his
way to Oklahoma and before his death purchased some land on
which oil was later found. At his death he willed a sum of money
to each of his two sons and to his grandchildren. In the family to
which the head of the present Henning family belonged there were
six children, each of whom received $600. This was used to make
one-half payment on the farm on which they now live. After a
period he went to Birmingham for work and from his savings,
while his children were still young, completed the payment on the
house and farm.

Sixty-one of the 612 families (about 10 per cent) owned or are
buying their homes. Four hundred and forty-three families rented

as tenants or croppers, and 108 lived in cabins on plantations.
Again, the majority of these families live in either two- or three-
room cabins; there are 259 families (42 per cent) in two-room and
176 (28 per cent) in three-room cabins, and 59 families live in one-
room cabins. In two of these one-room cabins there were seven
and eight persons, but in most of them only one or two persons
resided.

THE FAMILY

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE

BEFORE a child reaches the age of twelve there are duties de-
1 manding, with the same insistence felt by his parents, his
presence in the field. The routine of cotton cultivation has lent
itself with a fatal pliancy to a division of labor capable of extension
with each stage of growth from childhood to maturity. Where
there are children there is always work to be done to earn the bare
living they require. Where there are no children it is less possible
to perform all the tasks required to earn enough to survive. Herein
lies a first disorganizing factor in the family organization of the
community. Immediate as well as remote survival imposes relent¬
less demand for children’s labor and the exactions of an economic
system of ever increasing severity impose a forced growth upon the
children from the moment of birth. Every aspect of the life urges
to the earliest possible attainment of adulthood. Where there is
early maturity we have come to expect early marriages, especially
for women. There is, as a rule, among Negro women generally a
greater tendency to early marriage than among white families, and
this tendency is accentuated in cities. In southern cities it is much
more pronounced than in southern rural areas, but in this special
group studied the tendency is considerably less than in other
southern rural areas.

The trend in this community runs in an exactly opposite direc¬
tion from that of the population in general. For the general popu¬
lation not only are there earlier marriages in the country, but, on
the whole, more marriages. Ogburn and Groves explain this by
observing that women are the ones most markedly affected by

urban trends. They become dissatisfied with their rural economic
and social status in a monotonous environment, and move to the
city where there is more life and greater economic opportunity.
This independence in time results in surplus of women at the mar¬
riageable ages in the cities. The men are more rooted in the soil.

There is a population unbalance in the rural Negro group
studied but the heavier migration has been on the part of the men.
The women are the stable element. There is ample support of
the statistical differences observed in the large number of women
heads of families, their importance to the agriculture of this area,
their approximation to economic equality with the men, and their
present dominant role in the family.

Other factors play an even more important part in accentuating
this difference. The organization of the Negro families in this area
to make it the most efficient economic unit tends to discourage
early marriage of either men or women. When a young person
marries the original family unit is seriously disturbed. The eco¬
nomic returns from the period of nurturing unproductive children
come only when the children, male or female, reach an age which
enables them to contribute to the support and earnings of the
family group. Custom and practice recognize this situation.
Young people are simply not expected to marry early, and, apart
from the insecurity of such a venture, when such marriages occur
they encounter a pronounced disapproval. When such early mar¬
riages occur the couple is expected to live in and become a part of
the household of the parents of the boy or girl.

The situation of economic independence of women in cities is
reversed in this community, and is reflected rather strikingly in
the economic independence on the part of the Negro women in
the country. Their earning power is not very much less than that
of men, and for those who do not plan independent work there is
greater security in their own family organization where many
hands contribute to the raising of cotton and of food than there is
for them alone with a young and inexperienced husband. It is
practically impossible for two young persons alone to attend all the
details of cotton cultivation on a scale sufficient for adequate sup-

port of themselves. Likewise, it is extremely unlikely that any
young man will be able to accumulate sufficiently to ‘‘get on his
feet” before marrying.

The condition most favorable to early marriage of a girl is that
in which the girl is being sought by a widower considerably her
senior, who has had years of experience with the system and who,
at the same time, has already some other persons in the household;
or a condition in which a young girl is sought by a younger man
who is working as a plantation hand with no personal responsi¬
bilities at all. In this latter case the addition of a wife, young or
old, is welcome as an additional farm hand. The experience of one
of these girl-brides will make this situation more real. “I married
Tore I was fourteen years old. I run off and got married; no preach¬
er ain’t married me. The man, Mr. - ,that my husband worked

for, married us. He didn’t tell me to go back home, ’cause he
knowed I was a good hand and then he could have me there too.”

The postponement of marriage in the section which has been
noted does not preclude courtship, but accentuates it, and gives
rise to other social adjustments based upon this obvious economic
necessity. The active passions of youth and late adolescence are
present but without the usual formal social restraints. Social be¬
havior rooted in this situation, even when its consequences are
understood, is lightly censured or excused entirely. Conditions are
favorable to a great amount of sex experimentation. It cannot al¬
ways be determined whether this experimentation is a phase of
courtship, or love-making without the immediate intention of
marriage, or recreation and diversion. Whether or not sexual inter¬
course is accepted as a part of courtship it is certain no one is
surprised when it occurs. When pregnancy follows, pressure is not
strong enough to compel the father either to marry the mother or
to support the child. The girl does not lose status, perceptibly,
nor are her chances for marrying seriously threatened. An inci¬
dental compensation for this lack of a censuring public opinion is
the freedom for children thus born from warping social condemna¬
tion. There is, in a sense, no such thing as illegitimacy in this com¬
munity.

The community tends to act upon the patterns of its own social
heritage. This is true of sex relations as well as of economic rela¬
tions. The tradition of the plantation in relation to morals, sex
relations, and marriage never has conformed to that of the world
outside. Unique moral codes may develop from isolation. It has
happened elsewhere. Even in America there have developed pat¬
terns of sex relations among white communities not very different.
In rustic villages of Bavaria, Austria, Norway, and Switzerland
the presence of illegitimate children is not a handicap to women
who wish to marry, but the conditions there have been different.

In the families of this study the customary courtship period is
observed, but in conformity with a tradition older than the county
itself, when pregnancy follows this relationship it is not socially
imperative that marriage follows. A woman may have several
beaux but only one with whom she is intimate. This was more
than once mentioned in the course of this study, as an approximate
virtue. The character of the present concern about premarital re¬
lations is to some extent apparent in the comment of one of the
women:

The first man I ever courted got me in “family way.” I uster live on

P - ’s place ’fore I married. My baby was ten months old when me

and my husband married. I was trying to wait ’til he got on his feet and

got something ’fore we married, but he never did get nothin’ . He

knowed it was his child, ’cause he looked jest like his daddy, and after he
was born we went on together jest like we was at first. I never did fool
around [have sex relations] with nobody else but him, though I had other
beaux and he knowed it. Then after a while me and him jest got married.

Another woman, now the mother of five children and married to
a man from one of the older families in the section, remarked casu¬
ally and frankly: “Our first child was born before we was married.
Then he wanted to marry me, so I married him.”

Younger people may court, but their affairs are not often of long
duration or binding. Church meetings, church suppers, festivals
and frolics, and the Saturday trip to town are the occasions on
which they usually meet. At the church suppers and other more
public affairs the younger men and the younger women group

5°

separately. The men entertain themselves loudly with jokes and
stories, frequently ribald, and with various actions to attract the
attention of the girls or to provoke laughter. The young girls when
together, whether experienced or not, affect shyness but are rarely,
if ever, unaware of the boys. In the course of the evening a boy
may take one of the girls aside for more intimate conversation
which may then lead to a less decorous intimacy.

The courtship of older couples is from the beginning a more seri¬
ous adventure. When one of the older men is courting, either a
young woman or one nearer to his age, a change is noted in his
personal behavior. At public affairs he leaves off the familiar over¬
alls and “dresses up.” The act conspicuously alters his personality.
He escorts the young woman to parties and buys ice-cream or pigs’
feet or chicken or chitterlings for her. The relationship is thus
noted by their friends. Where courting has gone on publicly and
the sanctions thus recorded, marriage tends most often to follow
the legal and approved form, whether the divorce has been legal
or not.

In so general a condition of uncertainty and indifference about
the legality of marriage or divorce the question is not often raised,
but it is nevertheless true that for the particular ones — that is,
those who have begun taking over the pattern of the new culture —
the fact of legality is worth mentioning, with at least the expecta¬
tion of approval.

Jealousy and the violent expressions of this passion are mani¬
fested by both men and women during the courtship period, by
legally married couples and by companions in a common-law rela¬
tionship. Because Ben Mason began courting Alice Harris’ daugh¬
ter another woman shot him five times. But Ben Mason had not
himself the best reputation. A few years earlier he had accidental¬
ly killed one girl while shooting at another who had spurned his
attentions. The gossip of the community for the greater part of a
month centered around the murder of a young woman at one of the
frolics, by a man who came in a blind rage of jealousy to kill his
wife because she was “running ’round with other men.’’ The story
comes most vividly from the mother of the murdered girl:

My little gal got killed just one week ago today. She was a good chile.
Never give no trouble. Yes, she was married and had a baby two years
old. She and me went to one of those suppers the other night. I was
sitting on the bed in one room and all of a sudden Jake Johnson run in
and said, “Willa’s done been killed.” I run out there and there she was
all heaped on the bed— limp. The house was so full, but I just screamed
and run to her. I picked her up in my arms and her brains was all shot
out in her hair. When I put her down I was covered with blood and I
couldn’t do nothing but scream. Some nigger come in there to kill his
wife ’cause she was going running ’round with other men, but he missed
her and put a steel bullet in my baby. This is the dress she got killed in.
And I’m going to show you her wedding dress, too. The society I belongs
to paid $40 for the burial. I didn’t lose nothing that way. That was such
a good chile; she was a good wife. Her husband said he’d get that nigger
yet, but they found him. The sheriff’s got him now at Tuskegee. I sure
hopes they punish him good ’cause he’s caused me so much pain.

In one family the wife displayed a face grotesquely twisted. Her
teeth protruded through a vicious slash in her upper lip. She said:

My husband did it — jest jealous-hearted. He hit me right up there

with a fence post and it wasn’t bout nothing . Lots of times we’d

get to scrapping off of nothing. I used to could do as much wid him as he
could wid me, tell he got me down, then I’d stop him. Folks used to say,
“Carrie, you must be mighty bad.” But I tell ’em no I ain’t bad, and if
they’d look at the starting of it they would see it was his fault. We hardly
ever have any falling out now though. He said he didn’t believe I was
doing all them things he ’cused me of, but he would git in behind me for
fear.

Older and more experienced men have decided that jealousy
does not pay. It is a disturbing force capable of sapping the spirit
of every activity.

Husband: My wife and me, us been married, this coming Saturday,
nigh forty years. I slapped her once since I been married. Any friends
we know she meets ’em, kiss ’em, and we go right along. I ain’t going to
let nothing disturb me but the Lord. When you jealous you don’t live
long.

Wife: You be jealous and you may be up at the church but you can’t
rest. The meeting won’t do you a bit of good; you may be thinking about
that man riding with some woman.

Sex, as such, appears to be a thing apart from marriage. A dis¬
tinction is very well drawn by one unmarried middle-aged woman
with several children who said: “What I wants now is a husband
not a man. I wants somebody to help me take keer of these chil-
lun.” The legal relationship had little to do with her romantic life.
Jealousy is manifested not so much when infidelity to the institu¬
tion has been discovered as where there is evidence of a transfer of
affection, whether it involves sexual intercourse or not. A woman
came back from her parents’ and found her husband with women
in her own home. He became angry at her intrusion and began
swearing. When she responded he struck her with a stick. She
went home and considered herself permanently separated. The ob¬
jection was not primarily to the irregularity of her husband’s as¬
sociation with women, but to the fact that he beat her.

Tom Bright was my husband, but he fight me so I just couldn’t live
with him. He treat me so bad. I didn’t do nothing a-tall. I uster cook his
breakfast and he’d come home with a big stick and beat me. Said I did¬
n’t have breakfast done. He drank but he wa’n’t drunk when he beat
me. One time I went away to mamma’s and come back I found some
women in my house. When I come in he got mad and went to cussin’,
so I packed up and went back home.

The comment of a woman of twenty-five who had been married
twice suggests an attitude from the other side of the picture. The
husband v/as jealous but trifling. The woman seemed to feel that
he had no right to be jealous unless he was also useful.

The first man [husband] wasn’t no good — just trifling. I soon got rid
of him. First we kept separating and then going back. Then I met Major
and my first old man started right away to' getting jealous. So I left him,
but I did right. I went down there to Montgomery and got my divorce.
It cost me $32.50, but it was worth it, seein’ it ’liminated all his ’tach-
ment to me.

Ceremonial recognition is more often given to weddings than to
any other event in the life of the family. Even though this seldom
occurs now, there are sufficient traces of an old custom to allow it
to be revived when it is especially desired to give formal public
sanction to marriage. On these occasions the nuptials are cele-

brated with wine and cake and festivities, by the friends and rela¬
tives of the couple. Occasionally small tokens are exchanged.
There has been a practice, tracing back several generations to
slavery, of making this an occasion of festivity. Slaves, although
not always encouraged to marry, and deprived of the civil sanction
of a ceremony, when there was mutual desire, provided it was with¬
in the limits of the master’s circumstances, were allotted a cabin,
given small tokens by the master and mistress, and a ceremony,
conducted by a Negro preacher and patterned after the custom of
the whites. It is spoken of now by some of the older members of
the community, and little change is noted in the forms of the cere¬
mony. Speaking of slavery, one said:

The folks married then jest like they do now. They did jump over a
broomstick [a custom now abandoned] but the preacher had a Bible and
married them. Sometimes the sheriff married them. If you and this

sister come engaged you would ask Mr. - for her and he would say,

“Do you love this nigger?” and he would go and ask if she loved you.
Then, whatever place you stayed on your master would have to buy
whichever one would come there.

The Ideal Wife

Young men when they marry want someone whose labor can
help them “get on their feet.” Middle-aged men want younger
women who can combine this labor with some of the feminine
graces. Old men want companionship. A good woman, it is con¬
ceded, can be of moral assistance to a man.

I always tell my old lady that every man ought to have a good woman
to ’courage and help him. My old lady and me always says the young
married folks gets along better. She and me, we don’t have no difficulties,
but Lordy, you ought to a see that chile I married first! She was a pretty
little thing, but she up and died and never had no chilluns.

A man of thirty-five, still unmarried, stipulated three conditions
which a woman should meet before he would be willing to marry.
She must be able to work, she must be nice looking, and she must
be willing to acknowledge him as the head of the house.

The most desirable mates for girls in those families ambitious to

maintain a stable unit are men who can assure further stability.
Unfortunately for romantic love, the economic arrangement under
which they live does not develop many eligibles for daughters of
such families, and family authority is exerted, sometimes to the
point of physical force, to keep the girls from marrying at all, be¬
cause it would seriously disturb the economic balance of the origi¬
nal family unit. Elopements have been a means of escaping these
complications.

Me and my husband was courtin’ a long time, and we jest ’cided to git
married. Hit was on a Wednesday night and me and my brother went
down ter my cousin’s to carry a turkey hen, and I seed a light of a car
and we got in the car and drove home. We stayed home ’bout half a hour,
and I had done got my clothes and carried them over ter my girl friend’s
house, then to my grandma’s home. I set up till all went to bed. So I
pretended I was going to set on the front porch, and I got my coat and
started running. He was up the road. I got scared after I got out of the
house ’cause I knowed papa would know my clothes wasn’t home, and
if I went back he’d kill me. We got married, and I didn’t have time to
drink no wine and cake, and we went over to his mother’s house. We
heard the horn coming and runned in the house, and sho’ nuff it was papa,
and he axed my husband’s mother, “Is my little Gracey here?” He had a
shot gun and he was so mad my husband’s mother told him I wasn’t
there, and he left. Reason I didn’t ask papa, I knowed he wouldn’t
give me away. Mamma done said it was all right with her, but papa

always said no, ’cause he wouldn’t give my two oldest sisters away.

•

The conflict here is between the basic requirement of the family
group for the added value of the services of its grown children, the
prospect of transferring this service to another family, and the im¬
peratives of romantic love.

Hodman Speeks was a widower about fifty-eight years old, and
reputed to have saved some money over the years. He owned his
home and was now ready to marry again, and felt that he could
afford to select a wife without being bound by the usual economic
considerations. He was not particular about the women of his com¬
munity. He had seen too much of them. They not only were a
disappointment, but failed also to respect sufficiently his own valu¬
ation of the advantages which he, as a husband, could bring. But

if a young and attractive woman came in from the outside he
would attire himself in his old Prince Albert coat, a cane, and a
high collar, and begin a round of visits in the neighborhood.

Pm looking for a good woman right now [he confided to a visitor to
the neighborhood]. You know a man gits filled with betterment after he
gits a good wife. Now, I tells you, I’m this kind of a man. I feels that
’tain’t a man’s place to slave a woman to death. I’m going to take care
of a wife. When my other wife got taken sick I had a doctor to her in less
than fifteen minutes. I owns this home, but ’tain’t fit for a woman. I
got some money and I’d build a new house. I know something ’bout
telephones, too. I’d see that they git a telephone put in here. My wife
could have her own little patch and we’d be right happy together — she’n
me. ’Tain’t meant for a man to be all alone in the world — reckon he gits
too reckless with hisself.

Neither the young women of the country nor the old ones, how¬
ever, were much impressed with the widower. As he passed the
house of one of his neighbors a woman remarked, “Here comes that
old man Speeks. He ain’t got good sense. He got more land than
he knows what to do with, but he’s so mean and foolish nobody
goes near him.”

The Ideal Husband

When a very young woman marries it is usually for security. A
more mature young woman marries to insure herself the exclusive
attention and earning power of a man who is already or likely to
be the father of her children. The middle-aged woman offers her¬
self or accepts a husband on approximately equal terms of working
value. An old woman, when she marries at all, seeks companion¬
ship and that shadowy security afforded by a man of her own age.
Unlike the men, an old woman does not often marry a person
younger than herself. A mother of a young girl set this ideal before
her daughter: “I wants my daughter to marry a good man, so she
won’t haveter work in the field and be diggin’ here and dere, like
me.” Millie Williams had been married once, but was separated
from her husband, who left the section and went to Pittsburgh to
live. She was carefully considering remarriage, and thus described
her ideal:

Rubin is so good to me. He buys me groceries; sometimes $1.50 and
sometimes $1.75 worth, every two weeks. You know he is jest a young
man, only twenty-five years old, and a preacher, too. He is sure good to
me. He works at the Veneer plant and gits $1.25 a day, and he sure sees
after me. We going to git married pretty soon.

Although the young women frequently marry older men, they
are sometimes brutally contemptuous of them once their earning
power is affected. “That old man, if he could do something I could
tell you how much we made. But he don’t do no work. He’s jest
a lazy nigger.” Another said: “Aw, my old man won’t do. He
ain’t no count now nohow. He’s so old he can’t do nothing. Can’t
even see.” This particular husband was about fifty and his wife
thirty-seven.

Color consciousness plays a part in the selection of mates. On
several occasions women remarked that they wanted a husband,
but he “must be good and dark,” meaning by “good” in this case
“completely” and by dark “black.” There are few mulatto women
in the community, and mulatto men have a reputation for being
“run-roun’ men” and poor providers for dark women.

A man who has been unsuccessful in holding other wives is not
regarded favorably as a prospect. “No, indeed, I don’t want him.
He done had two wives and couldn’t keep ’em. Ain’t nobody goin’
to live wid dat man.” Men who do women’s work are similarly
unpopular. “You know when a man’s used to washing and cook¬
ing for hisself, jest like a woman, he’s hard to git ’long wid.” Physi¬
cal strength, dogged industry, and a good disposition were the
chief virtues hoped for in a husband. They took precedence over
all considerations of possession of money, social position, educa¬
tion, physical attractiveness, or that kind of ambition which
sought to abandon the familiar round of life.

THE CHILDREN

In a system which requires the labor of the entire family to earn
a living, children of a certain age are regarded as an economic as¬
set. They come fast, and there is little conscious birth control.
The coming of children is “the Lord’s will.” The number of mis-

carriages and stillbirths is extraordinarily high and the infant mor¬
tality great. There is pride in large families. “Good breeders” are
regarded with admiration. One woman quoted a doctor as explain¬
ing that she was “sickly” because she “needed to breed.” For men
the size of the family is a test of virility and for women fecundity
has tremendous weight in their valuation as mates. This was a
conscious boast: “Course my wife she done been laid up with dead
chillun until she marry me. She ain’t never lost no chillun by me,
but that other man she had made her chillun all die.” Interest in
children and in large families, and the high fecundity rate, may
indeed carry over from the period of slavery when social status
among Negro slave women was in an important measure based
upon their breeding power. Again it may reflect adjustment to a
high mortality-rate which demands a correspondingly high birth¬
rate to insure a balanced survival in the population. Assertion that
a woman cannot have children by a man constitutes a slur. Some
of the most cheerful women were those with large families. The
contented comment of one very large and comfortably sprawling
mother of thirteen children offers a good illustration of a sentiment
not uncommon: “Lordy, I’m jest building up dis world wid babies,
and can’t help it. Well, dey says it’s healthy to have chillun, so I
jest goes on.”

Mary Harris, another mother of a large family, had been mar¬
ried to Jim only six years, but they had fifteen children. Jim’s
wife had been barren but Mary was not, and, although unmarried
herself, she gave Jim ten children before his wife died. Then they
married and she presented him with five more, and may yet pre¬
sent others.

Children, in the average family group, once a part of the family
are accepted good-naturedly and as a matter of course. There were
indications of conflicting types of interest in children. The uncon¬
trolled fecundity, the almost universal set for large families, and
the acceptance of parents, mothers particularly, of the responsi¬
bility for supporting any number which they happened to have,
point to a fundamental interest in children, whatever the motiva¬
tion. This interest as expressed, however, was almost without ex-

ception in “children.” There was little indication of individualiza¬
tion of attention, or recognition of separate personalities, and very
imperfect expression of those sentiments of strong emotional at¬
tachment to separate child personalities which are noted in the
more advanced families. The affectional relationship was mani¬
fest, but not emotionally stressed. Parents as a rule clung to their
children as long as they could provide them subsistence. The harsh
and frequent incidence of hard times created so many occasions
for failure in this respect, particularly if one of the chief bread¬
winners withdrew, that passing over children for adoption was
fairly common and the community had attempted to meet this
need by making adoption a simple and natural procedure.

Frequently there was confusion on the matter of names and
ages of children. Numbers of mothers could not remember the
names of all the children, unless they were looking at them. This
may have been due to the habit of ignoring names of children, and
supplying simple “pet names” for identification. Ages require a
reflection and counting which is not always done accurately in
communities of higher literacy. On a visit to the home of a family
in which there were fifteen children the question of the ages of the
children came up. The mother, squat, dark, and glistening with
perspiration, sat on her porch, making her breast available al¬
ternately to an infant in arms and one about a year old. When
asked about the names and ages of her children her first response
was one of exasperation that she should be expected to remember
a mass of details of this character. She shouted to one of the chil¬
dren, “Go in the house and git the Bible, ’cause God knows I don’t
remember how old them chilluns is.” After a moment she said,
“All dese you see here ain’t mine, but most of ’em is.” Actually,
there were several adopted children in the group who were so
completely incorporated into the family as to be considered her
own. She had to separate, in her thinking, those whom she had
“birthed” and those whom she had acquired by other means. The
names and ages of seven were read from the Bible and she assented,
and thought these were all. Then the name of Robert was men¬
tioned, and she explained that she had forgotten to account for

him. Later three other names were mentioned by the children
which had not been listed in the Bible. “All dem mine too,” she
said. “Jest been having chillun all my life.”

On another occasion when a large family was being visited, the
father was trying unsuccessfully to name his children as his wife
returned from the field. She scolded him for his ignorance and
began naming them herself. When she failed it became a hilarious
joke, and the husband ran into the yard rocking and roaring with
laughter.

The families cited in this connection are exceptional in the sense
of having a large number of children still alive. The fecundity rate
is very high, but the number of children who survive even the first
period of infancy is comparatively small.

I got so many chillun dead I don’t know how long they been dead,
’bout six of ’em. The first boy was a grown man, twenty years old. He
died with consumption, but I ain’t had no consumption. The other girl
I don’t know how come she died. There was one that I “overlaid.”1 I
went to sleep and the child was nursing, and I give so much milk that she
smothered. The other boy was four years old. We had a mule and Mensi-
field [the husband] wanted to come to the master’s home. Louis [the son]
was right smart so he jumped at the mule data way. I was in condition
[pregnant] at that time. Said to him, “Mensy, don’t you spose dat mule
kick you in de side?” It raised a knot on Louis’ head. He tuck to his bed;
had a hot fever, and died.

Jest one child I had had fits. She had two spasms, and I jest giver her a
little pepper and salt and she ain’t had no more. She grown now and
got a cowpen full of chillun herself.

The actual number of cases in which children were given away
to other relatives or friends and the fact that adopted children
taken into these families with such small distinction between them
and the natural offspring suggest that the ties between parents and
children, especially where the families are large, are as much in¬
fluenced by the opinion current in the community as by the in¬
terests of the family as a separate unit. Parents hesitated to give
away their children to non-relatives for adoption, although this

1 Accidentally smothered to death in a crowded bed.

happened numbers of times, but very frequently turned them over
to another relative, usually the grandparents of the children.

In the economy of the family the relationship of members of the
family to one another is not so strongly stressed as in families of
the conventional type. Once out of immediate contact, the affec-
tional basis of the relationship was perceptibly weakened. Interest
frequently dwindled away and the child most often became a rec¬
ognized and permanent part of the family of the grandparents.
The fathers showed much less concern than the mothers when
these physical ties were broken. This is the general situation pat¬
tern which fosters so considerable an amount of child adoption.
The frequency of separations of families with children and the
large number of children born outside of formal family relations
normally throw a considerable burden of responsibility upon
grandparents, and this responsibility, in turn, is accepted as a
matter of course. Actually there was a marked sense of social obli¬
gation to children, expressed more by grandparents than by par¬
ents with numbers of children.

Sadie Thompson not only had a family of her own, now prac¬
tically grown, but had undertaken the rearing of some of the
grandchildren and other adopted ones. She had enterprise and ini¬
tiative and both virtues were required to keep up her household.
There was in her solicitude for the children a feeling rarely ex¬
pressed, whether experienced or not, by families regarding their
own immediate offspring. And with this feeling there was mixed
some appreciation of the economic value of the children them¬
selves.

I got these little motherless children here and got nothing to give them
to eat. I never had a mouthful to give them yesterday and last night Mr.
Walker just give them boys a dollar and I couldn’t buy nothing but a lit¬
tle meal and a spoonful of lard. These children got a father but he don’t
give them nothing. These my dead daughter’s children. Sometimes I
look at them and tears get in my eyes. We made fourteen bales of cotton
last year, and didn’t get a penny for it. The little children was barefooted
and didn’t have a thing. If they hadn’t had a little pig and I made some
syrup I don’t know what the little things woulda done. Every time they
go to the white man they say they can’t let you have nothing. Something

is wrong somewhere but they ain’t letting the nigger know where it is. I
hate to go so far and not get nothing. “I don’t reckon we will die,” said
one of my sons. But you will die ’cause every one of you all look sick
in the eyes and it’s cause you ain’t had enough food. This is a starving

land . This is the worst place I ever run on in my life. If you could

jest get out of it all you put in it you could live happy. This is good rich
land, and you could make money if we was treated right. The mules
ain’t even got nothing to eat, and we have to pull up the little corn and
feed it to them. I look at my children sometimes and I’m sorry I ever
born a child in the world. I believe in living like people. My children is
smart ’cause I taught them to work. Us never do hire no day hands. We
all help one ’nother get through with the chopping. They busy all the
time. How they hold up I can’t see.

Economic considerations almost without exception constitute
the nexus which binds parents and children, and in the constant
economic stress of the section it is what would be expected. “All
my children is big enough to work, but three, and I got ten here.
I got two children by my first wife and got ’bout two or three more
’sides that. I don’t know where they is.”

It was, however, impossible to escape the observation that once
separation came it was complete and final. Once children leave
home they rarely return. There was, besides, the frequency of pa¬
ternal desertion, the uncertainty of support for the children loaned
to friends or relatives, the frequent confusion and indifference
about their names and ages, and the failure to remember the dead.
Children who had died were seldom referred to in terms which
suggested emotional ties. They were merely lost children. It was
as if the role of fate and numbers was blended with a dour philoso¬
phy which accepted these crises as inevitable incidents of the strug¬
gle for survival. Moreover, it was apparent that hopelessly crip¬
pled or deformed children, like the hopelessly decrepit old, were
not objects of pathos or sentiment. They were tolerated with some
fortitude despite the general economic strain as a phase of the
mutualism of their community relations. A woman was asked if
she had any crippled or deformed children. She responded prompt¬
ly: “No, I ain’t got no cripple chillun. If I had I ’spect I would uv
kilt ’em.” This was probably an extreme expression, under a situ-

ation of economic stress, of a very real sentiment. Actually there
were few such children in the community. It v/ould indeed be diffi¬
cult for them to survive in a situation which made survival dif¬
ficult even for normal children in infancy. Another woman was
explaining the presence of a female relative in the home: “This
lady who stays here is my husband’s cousin. She gonna have a
baby soon. She got two more, but she gie’d dem away. She ain’t
married; the child’s father he ’round here somewheres.” In this
instance the responsibility of children would obviously be a bur¬
den to the woman. The family to which she had given her chil¬
dren regarded them freely and easily as their own, but their own
children were regarded primarily as potential helpers in the severe
struggle for existence. The comments about their children, and
almost always about the adult ones, were followed by some such

consideration: “She’s a good chile . She bring me something

to eat when she can.” Or: “I can’t let dat boy marry. He all I
got to help me.”

Separations and divorce frequently divide the children or leave
all of them with one parent. The natural handicaps, for illiterate
people, of communication contribute to a stretching-out of filial
ties, often to the vanishing-point. “My girl, Fannie Mae, is with
her father in Pittsburgh. She been gone ’bout ten years. I ain’t
heard ’bout her since Christmas ’fore last. I speck she still dere.”

There are, on the other hand, examples of strong and more ob¬
vious attachment between parents and children above the age of
dependence, who remain at home, and this is especially true of
widowed mothers and their sons. One of the most extraordinary
instances of parental devotion, however, was observed in the case
of one family, incidentally one of the few farm-owners in the area,
whose son had been prostrate and deformed from infantile paraly¬
sis for more than ten years. The father had made himself a char¬
acter in the town, stalking about like one in a daze, and asking the
white doctors with annoying persistence and regularity if the doc¬
tors outside (medical science) had discovered anything yet to cure
his boy.

Pregnancy

Pregnancy is treated both in fact and in the verbal allusions to
it occasionally with a moderate gesture of concealment, but just
as frequently with practical matter-of-factness. A woman is “close
to the bed,” or “cripple,” or in plain terms “ ’bout to have a baby,”
or “stomach stickin’ out.” The situation of most of the women
permits little opportunity in the period of pregnancy to experience
exhilaration and consciousness of the psychic values of such func¬
tioning.

I’s cripple and ain’t able to lift nothing. When I says cripple dat
means what you see, dat Fs going to have a baby. I jest been spitting
and heaving all over this house. Dis heat make it worse. Girls what
ain’t married don’t never ought to get deyselves no rainbow. First thing
she be so sick and heaving and all de man is gonna say is “You’ll be better

soon,” and go ’long ’bout sumpin else . My mother is staying here

till my cripple is better. That what I done to git this here baby sho’
ain’t worth all this sufferin’ and sickness.

The economic consideration is evident even in the incidence of
this temporary handicap. When John Edwards was asked why all
of his six children were born in July, he said people teased him
about this, but, whether intended or not, “It’s lucky for me, ’cause
she [his wife] can hoe up till ’bout time and then she’s ready to
pick when fall comes.”

Adoption

Adoption of children is a fairly common practice. Several factors
appear to be responsible. Children after a certain age are, as indi¬
cated earlier, an economic asset. Childless couples, for whatever
reason, have not the social standing in the community of families
with children. The breaking-up of families, through desertion or
migration, results in the turning-over of children to relatives or
friends, and since little distinction in treatment enters, they soon
are indistinguishable from the natural children, and assist them
by dividing the load of heavy families. Moreover, adoption is re¬
lated to illegitimacy, and frequently the children in families which
are referred to as adopted are really the illegitimate offspring of

one’s own daughter or neighbor’s daughter. The child of an un¬
married daughter becomes another addition to the children of the
parents of the girl with all the obligations. Discipline is in the
hands of the original parents and the young mother’s relationship
to her son is in most respects the same as her relationship to her
younger brother. These children call her by her first name and
refer to their natural grandparents as “mama” and “papa.” It has
happened that men have adopted into their legitimate families
extra-legal children by other women, and with no apparent dis¬
tinction that would make them unfavorably conspicuous among
the other children. Again, children orphaned by any circumstances
are spontaneously taken into childless families.

This girl, we find here when us come down here. She be’s both orphan
by mother and father, and nobody to look atta her. So we jest tuk her as
one of the family, and don’t sho’ no difference. We don’t tell no differ¬
ence. This little boy is my sister’s boy. I can’t ’dopt him long as she live,
’cause I don’t want no dissatisfaction. But he won’t stay with her. She
carry him home and have to bring him back.

One way of getting rid of children of low mentality who are
likely to become an economic burden is to give them to childless
couples.

H is wife left him [the adopted son]. He’s my boy. He thinks I’m his
mother. She give him to me when he was a baby, and I ain’t never told
him no better. He’s not right bright, but he’s got sense nuff to treat you
right, and he is so much help. His mother wasn’t right bright either. I
kept him in school till he was twenty, but he never did finish the first
grade. The teacher said I was doing my duty, but he jest couldn’t learn.
Course, he can write and read, too. When he is away, he writes to me,
and he can’t read his own letters. He’s jest sort of frenzy.

The ease with which the adoptions are made is interesting.
There are few families, indeed, however poor, that would not at¬
tempt to rear a child left with them. Adoption, in a sense, takes
the place of social agencies and orphans’ homes.

No, I ain’t got no husband; he ain’t dead, I don’t guess. I ain’t seen
him in eight years. He left me here wid these chillun, so I try to take
keer of them. The girl is my niece. Her mother and father both dead.

Me and my wife been married thirty-two years. We ain’t got no chil-
lun of our own. My wife ’dopted this little boy. He eleven years old.
His mamma gie’d him ter my wife soon atta he was born. His mamma
’round here in Shorter somewhere. We don’t know nothing ’bout his
daddy. His mamma ain’t never been married as we knows of.

Children and School

This much is recognized — that when educating children is con¬
sidered, the economic advantage of having them disappears. Al¬
most unvaryingly, too, an interest in education goes along with
landownership.

We moved here in 1905. My father started buying this place. Getting
time to move now, ain’t it? I own no acres here. The rest of them chillun
didn’t want to stay on the farm. They just got tired and moved differ¬
ent places. My father just worked this place up from the muscle. No¬
body didn’t help him. He was a old slavery-time fellow, and lived to get
about seventy-two years old. It’s about 1 66 acres in the whole place. I
got four tenants. My brother was off when my father died but he was
here when my mother died. He’s got I don’t know how many chillun.
He’s most too smart for me. I ain't got but one and she cost me 'bout as
much as his whole crowd , I reckon. She goes to Tuskegee. It costs a lot of
money to educate children. She fell down in one study, and she is going
to summer school to catch up in algebra. I have to pay her tuition and
buy books and carry her to and from school every day. It costs some¬
thing, I tell you.

Children Born out of IVedlock

The sexual unions resulting in the birth of children without the
legal sanctions are of several types, and cannot properly be
grouped together under the single classification of “illegitimate.”
Children of common-law relationships are not illegitimate, from
the point of view of the community or of their stability, for many
of these unions are as stable as legally sanctioned unions. They
hold together for twenty and thirty years, in some cases, and lack
only the sense of guilt. Again, there are competent, self-sufficient
women who not only desire children but need them as later aids
in the struggle for survival when their strength begins to wane, but
who want neither the restriction of formal marriage nor the con-

stant association with a husband. They get their children not so
much through weakness as through their own deliberate selection
of a father. Sexual unions for pleasure frequently result in chil¬
dren. There is a term for children born under the two latter cir¬
cumstances. They are called “stolen children.” “Stolen children,”
observed one mother, “is the best.” A woman with children and
who has been married though later separated from her husband
may add other children to her family, without the benefit of the
formal sanctions. These are “children by the way.” The youthful
sex experimentation, which is in part related to the late marriages,
often results in children. These are normally taken into the home
of the girl’s parents and treated without distinction as additions
to the original family. Finally, there are the children who result
from the deliberate philandering of young men who “make fool-
ments” on young girls. They are universally condemned. These
children, as circumstance directs, may be placed with the parents
of the mother or father of the child, an uncle, sister, or grand¬
mother. They are accepted easily into the families on the simple
basis of life and eventually are indistinguishable from any of the
other children. Even if there were severe condemnation for true
“illegitimates,” confusion as to origin would tend both to mitigate
some of the offenses and to obscure them all from specific con¬
demnation.

The sense of guilt may be noted in some of the more advanced
families but within the community as a whole social censure is not
severe, nor is there any notable loss of status because of “illegiti¬
macy.” It does not appear to be regarded as severely as, for ex¬
ample, the use of certain artificial forms of birth control, or “being
closed out,” which means having all of one’s crops, stock, and
tools taken over for debt.

The church recognizes illegitimacy as a “sin of the mother,” and
if the mother is brought into church meeting with other evidences
of “sin,” like card-playing or frolicking, she may be “put out of
church”; but readmission is possible with a solemn promise not to
do it again. Actually, there is less stress placed by the churches

upon illegitimacy as a “social sin” than upon card-playing and
playing ball.

The danger, from the point of view of health, is the promiscuity
of relations and the passing-on of venereal infection. Some men in
this section of the county have numerous children scattered about,
as a result of their tireless love-making with single girls, married
women with children of their own, and with widows.

The sense of shame and lowered status follows illegitimacy when
the family has, for one reason or another, become compact and
self-conscious; when there has been exposure to recognized stand¬
ards of a higher level, as a result of children returning from board¬
ing-school, or when the family has acquired some education.
Under such circumstances families are more careful about the
opinions of outsiders, and frequently force the father of the child
to marry the daughter. Ownership of property tends to restrict
illegitimate relations because of the economic complexities intro¬
duced, and the efFect of loose domestic relations upon credit and
leadership in relationships beyond the immediate community is a
restraining factor.

An attempt was made to measure the extent of illegitimacy.
One hundred and twenty-two women in 114 families had had 181
illegitimate children. The illegitimate children were present in all
but 3 of these 1 14 families. It is necessary, however, to make clear,
as far as possible, the condition under which illegitimacy was found
in these families. In the case of 24 couples now married the wife
had a child before marriage. In 14 of these 24 cases the father of
these children was the present husband, and in 10 cases the woman
had had the child by another man before marriage. In 2 cases
the women, who had subsequently married the father of their il¬
legitimate children, had had 4 children each. There were also 3
widowed women who had had illegitimate children since the death
of their husbands. In 13 families the mother was living alone with
her illegitimate children. Two of these mothers had 4 children, 2
had 3 children, and 4 had 2 children each.

One unmarried mother of thirty-three years of age had 6 chil-

dren of whom 4 were living. The oldest of those living was a girl
of twenty-one and the youngest a girl of ten. The father of all of
them was a man legally married, with a considerable family of his
own. The oldest daughter was unmarried and had 2 children.
Neither of the fathers of the children had offered any support and
the women have not asked for it. The mother is a one-half-share
cropper, and with the children she manages her farm about as
successfully as the average family with a male head. There were 8
women, separated from their husbands, who had illegitimate chil¬
dren. In one case the separated woman was living with her mother.
Illegitimate children were also found in the case of 10 common-law
couples. In 8 of these cases the children were by the men with
whom the wives were living, and in some cases there were 5 or 6
illegitimate children in the family. In 31 of the families a daughter
had 1 or more illegitimate children, and in 1 family 2 daughters
had an illegitimate child each. Illegitimate children were also
found in 9 families in which the daughter, who was the mother of
the children, was dead or away. In some cases the illegitimate
children in the home had been adopted. This was found to be the
case in 9 families. In 6 of the families the illegitimate child be¬
longed to relatives, as, for example, a cousin, or a sister of the
mother, or a nephew’s child outside of marriage. In 2 families a
son’s illegitimate child had been taken into the home, and in one
case the father’s illegitimate child had been taken in. In 5 of the
families the illegitimate child belonged to a granddaughter or to a
great granddaughter.

How the Children Come

I got so many chillun I don’t know where they all is. I got four living

and one dead that Mr. - is the father of. I been married once, but

me and him separated. They tell me he lives some place there near Tus-
kegee. I ain’t get no divorce. Don’t know whether he left me or no;

we jest ’cided to depart, and it’s been a good while ago. C - B -

was the father of two of my children. I ain’t know nothing else ’bout the
father of any of the rest of them, aside from them that he [pointing to

Mr. - ] been the father of. I can’t ’member nothing ’bout them. I

got frost-bitten one time and I can’t ’member so well.

The daughter emulated the mother. When asked about her daugh¬
ter’s child, she said:

How can I know who is the father of Corinne’s baby? We done had her
over there in school, and she come back and brought the baby. Whoever
he is, he don’t do nothing for the baby.

These is Carrie’s chillun. She ain’t married. She was jest sixteen when
the oldest child was born. Jimmie Hall is Leonard’s daddy, and Ernest
Watts is Leroy’s.

No, sir, they ain’t all got the same father! Them three is, but these
two darkest ones ain’t. I ain’t seen the daddy of the first ones since year
’fore last. He married and don’t give no help. I love him but I don’t
want to marry him. We started going together when I was a girl and
jest kept it up. I ain’t seen these others’ daddy since before this last one
was born. They tell me he over the creek, but I don’t know and I ain’t
worrying myself none about him. He ain’t like Hall. I like Hall and we
jest kept on going together till bad luck happened. If my mind keep on
like it is, I’m going to marry a man and trust him to take care of the chil¬
dren.

I wasn’t married to the boy’s father. We was engaged to marry but
he done some shooting and had to leave and he never did come back till
my boy was a big boy, so I jest didn’t care ’bout marrying him then. I
been married to somebody else now ’bout twelve years.

On one plantation a group of Negro women were living openly
with white men. Their children were mulattoes. One of the wom¬
en interviewed stated that the white man for whom she had been
housekeeper recently died and just left her with the house. Her
job had been ringing the bell for the other Negroes to go to work,
and she had been greatly disliked by the other Negro women on
the plantation. In still another situation the woman and a mulatto
daughter cooked for a group of white men. Said she: “They come
here three times a day to eat. They provide my clothing, food,
and this house.” Neighbors said they were the men’s “women.”

Twenty-four couples among the 612 families were living together
without legal sanction, in a first association. The time which these
couples had been together varied from one to more than thirty
years.

The frequency of children born out of wedlock and the fact that
no actual disgrace attaches to irregular birth occasionally work
out to the advantage of the child. Adoption has been given in¬
creased importance. There is a demand for children to adopt, and
an increased social status for families which adopt children.

Adoption in turn is commonly a convenience for children with¬
out the protection of a family organization of their own. A mother¬
ly old woman said: “These chillun here, they mother in Plaza.
They father somewhere ’bout near here. They all got the same
mother but different fathers. The two oldest ones was born ’fore
they mother married. I tuk them all soon atta they was born.’’

Older families, and especially old and widowed women, look
upon adoption as more of a privilege than a burden: “Lord, I
almost like to not be able to raise me that child; he was so sickly
at first.” The sentiment is sometimes carried to the point of sur¬
rounding the child with an importance which many children in
normal families lack.

SEPARATION AND DIVORCE

The actual number of divorces is small. In the 612 families
there were but 2 heads of families who could be classified as regu¬
larly divorced and not married again. There were other heads of
families who had been regularly divorced but who had remarried.
Taking account of the 8 individuals single and living alone, and the
105 who were widowed, less than half, or 231 of the 612 families,
were those in which the husband and wife were married for the
first time. Among the group of 105 widowed heads of families
some of the mates were dead and others had gone away without
declaring their intention to separate permanently. Voluntary sep¬
aration in the community really amounted to divorce, for many
of the parties involved remarried without regard for the legal
status of their first marriage.

Divorce is one of the legal formalities introduced from the out¬
side in regard to the meaning and purpose of which the community
is profoundly confused. Some of the families thought that going

from one county to another gave them the legal right to remarry.
It was believed that crossing the “line” (Mason and Dixon) meant
divorce. One such remarried woman exclaimed: “My husband
done cross de line; don’t hear nothing. He may be living or dead.
Ain’t dat divorce?” The simplest interpretation is that the act of

separation is divorce.

TABLE IV
Marital Status

Single — living alone . 8

Unknown . 4

Married — times unknown . 1

Both married once . 231

Husband married once, wife more than once. ... 24

Husband married more than once, wife once. ... 75

Both married more than once . 74

Married but separated . 52

Widowed . 105

Divorced . 2

Unmarried couples living together . 24

Unmarried mother with children, living without
father . 12

612

“They say when you separate from your husband you already
’vorced.” The term “giving a strip,” in common use, refers to the
act of a man or woman writing or having written on a piece of
paper the statement that he or she is divorced, and this stands as
final.

I been married three times. My other husband’s ’bout Wetumpka
somewhere. We jest couldn’t git along, so he revorced me, and me and
the second one fought like cats and dogs. One night he fought me so I
had to call for help. He left that night and the next day he got the wagon
and moved, and he asked me for a revorce; so I give him a strip. Marion
Wood write it. If I had time Fd ramble round here and find that strip they
sent me from Wetumpka.

There were other individuals who believed that the act of re¬
marriage of their spouse, even though no divorce was secured, con-

ferred upon them the freedom to marry again. “You see, my other
husband, when we separated, got married again first, so that di¬
vorced us.” A man and woman, aged forty-eight and forty-six,
respectively, had been married eighteen years. It was the second
marriage for both although neither had secured a divorce. Of her
first husband the wife said: “My husband didn’t leave me, but he
got into a little trouble about some cotton situation and went
away. He wanted me to go too, but I didn’t want to leave my
mother. He was gone a long time before I married again.” The
husband explained: “My wife just went away, and she’s over in
Cecil. I didn’t have to get a divorce, because she been gone a long

, • yy

time.

A man who had been drafted during the World War was positive
that he had been exempted by the government from any further
marital responsibility: “I’s an ex-soldier. They told me when I
went to the army and come back that the government had done
’vorced me, and I didn’t have to git naire ’vorce.” The arrange¬
ment of convenience is pushed at times with an almost brutal
severity. Old Amos Boyd said: “My wife she stay over in
La Place. She over there for her health. She come home ’bout
once a week, so I’m thinking ’bout Vorcing her. Now a good time
to ’vorce her.” When Minnie Toles was sick her husband left and
went to Cecil. When he came back she told him she didn’t need
him, and he was thereby divorced.

It would seem, again, that divorce is needed only in those cases
in which there was objection of one party to the separation. “Me
and him jest come here to live and she [his wife] ain’t claim him,
so I don’t speck he need a ’vorce.” The uncertainty about the
meaning of divorce contributes to the uncertainty about security
in marriage. One man was troubled because his wife had been gone
for more than a week on a visit to her mother, and he was not sure
whether or not she “had up and divorced” him. x\nother sent his
wife away on a visit in order that he might not be embarrassed by
her presence when he “made out a slip” for her divorce, which he
intended to do before she got back.

There is indication that the mores are in process of change in

the fact of the now serious and frequent discussion of the meaning
and purpose of legal divorce. This discussion took place between a
husband and wife and a visiting neighbor:

Neighbor: My husband don’t help me none with the child. He jest
throwed me away and I was sick. I wasn’t down in bed. He done mar¬
ried again. He didn’t had to git no divorce ’cause I didn’t want him no
more.

Wife: You know good and well he didn’t git no divorce, ’cause you’d
a knowed something ’bout it.

Husband: He could a had a divorce and you not know nothing ’bout
it. I had a divorce six months before my wife knowed anything ’bout it.
You git a divorce through and by money. They git a pencil and figure it
out for you ’thout the wife knowing nothing ’bout it.

Neighbor: He jest a “run-about” man anyhow.

One reason for the small number of divorces and the curious be¬
liefs regarding this formality has been suggested as the cultural
one of introduction from without of a new device for the regulation
of marital relations. Another is the actual cost of this legal pro¬
cedure. Divorce, after all, is a personal matter and the introduc¬
tion of a lawyer not only beclouds the issue but brings a demand
for cash which few of them have. The attitude of the courts toward
this omission is not severe. Rather, the disposition seems to be to
ignore it as a serious offense. So long as the practice affects no one
but the Negroes, and they accept it as a part of their lives, there is
no necessity for insisting upon a standard which, it is assumed,
they have not attained. From the point of view of the Negroes, so
long as no one is seriously inconvenienced by the permanency of
the separation or the fact of remarriage, it is considered an unnec¬
essary expenditure of money to get a divorce through the courts.
There is always more frequent demand for the permanent separa¬
tion than there is money.

There are instances of use of the external pattern of divorce but
without complete understanding of its real meaning, as, for exam¬
ple, when a man goes to town and “buys” a divorce for a woman
he hopes to marry, even though this woman’s husband may still
be living in the community.

Wife: This husband I got now bought me my divorce.

Husband: I paid thirty or thirty-five dollars for it. It’s different with
different people. It depends on how long they been separated and what
they separated for, and the lawyer too.

The influence of new ideas was evident in the family of Quarles.
Both had been married before, but they had been living together
about five years. The wife now thinks she should have a divorce
from her first husband, and her present husband plans to go to
town sometime and “buy” her one.

Causes of Separation and Divorce

Separation, like marriage, is regarded very largely as a personal
matter. Desertions are frequent and almost casual, growing out
of various kinds of disharmony. The woman deserts almost as
frequently as the man. There are at first temporary separations
following minor dissatisfactions. At any point, however, the sepa¬
ration may be made permanent by the remarriage of one of the
parties, or some change in circumstances which places either out
of reach. Couples separate six and eight times, each time return¬
ing because of the greater convenience of the existing arrange¬
ment, only to discover that the old basis of dissatisfaction had not
been removed. It is more “respectable” to separate, and even to
experiment further with another mate, than to tolerate certain
conditions with one’s legal mate.

The position of women in the community increases the rate of
separation at the same time that it decreases the social conse¬
quences of this separation. A deserted woman is not entirely help¬
less, and occasionally her economic burden is lightened by the
withdrawal of the man. The large number of women heads of
families may be accounted for in part by the desertion of the men,
in part by death, and in part by the withdrawal of the woman,
with her children, to set up an establishment working as a tenant
farmer or renter on some other plantation.

An underlying provocation to separation is the lack of functional
balance, with respect both to the business of earning a living and
to temperamental differences. The hard and drab life of most of

the families places a severe test upon this arrangement, and the
weaknesses of the social restraints of the community encourage
change. Separations which may be classed as desertions are, per¬
haps, the most numerous group and include among the underlying
motives general dissatisfaction with the association, trifling or lazy
husbands or wives, and such sentiments of resignation as “he jest
liked some other woman better.”

I divorced my first wife and I’m separated from the other one, but
she ain’t divorced. We didn’t fuss or nothing, we just decided to quit
intelligent.

Me and my wife went to Georgia, and me and her couldn’t agree and
she stayed in Georgia. I don’t know what come of her.

My wife talking ’bout quitting me ’cause I ain’t got no money. Good
time to quit now when I ain’t got nothing.

My ole lady jest walked off; say she goin’ be her own boss.

My wife jest left. She didn’t ask for no ’vorce — just told me to quit
writin’ to her in her name ’cause she was married. Dey didn’t git no
’vorce. After she married I didn’t have no ’vorce. I didn’t know she’d
quit me till her father told me.

An old man, calm and deliberate as he smoked his pipe, recounted
this series of disturbances in his domestic life:

In all I been married four times. The first wife, somebody poisoned
her with Paris green. An old woman poisoned her ’cause she couldn’t
whip her. She lived nine months and died on the Jordan place near
Downs. The second wife, Mary Ann, I quit her. She over there in Bul¬
lock County. The third wife caught fire and died. The next one been
gone since March, 1929. I didn’t quit her; I was gwine ter quit but she
didn’t gimme time; she quit me. She wouldn’t listen to me. If I say
“don’t go” then it’s best for her not to go.

In a situation in which separation is so lightly regarded there is
little occasion to make specific the causes.

Me and my fust wife separated. Don’t know where she is — me and
her jest parted.

7 6

My husband lives in Bullock. Don’t know why he leave me. Jest
picked up and left. He don’t give me nothing. I don’t know whether we
separated or no. He jest lives over there and I lives over here. He got
three of the children over there with him.

Of the specific causes of separation, cruelty is perhaps the most
frequently mentioned. Here, again, the women are not always at
a disadvantage, for they know how to fight back. Where this re¬
sistance is effective there follows a mutually respectful truce, or a
separation based upon incompatibility.

Tom Kerns was my husband, but he fight so I jest couldn’t live with
him. He treat me so bad.

I have been married two years. We went to the courthouse in Tuske-
gee. I have been back home to mother’s more than ten times since we
been married. Sometimes I stays two days and sometimes two weeks.
My husband don’t go away and leave me. He jest likes to fight and do’s
lots of things then I go home. My mother tells me to go back home.

I been married but my husband been too mean. Dis man ain’t like
him.

He was jest too mean. He was too old, too.

Me and my husband been parted three years. He was mean and lazy.

A second specific cause of separation and divorce is mismating
with respect to ages. Although there is apparently complete free¬
dom of selection, other factors of importance enter and are soon

Husbands over 40 married to women
Husbands over 40 married to women
Husbands over 40 married to women
Husbands over 40 married to women
Husbands over 40 married to women

No.

Per Cent

5 years younger. . . .

26,

■5

10 years younger. . .

. 6

15 years younger. . .

22.

•3

20 years younger. . .

. 1

of same age bracket

22,

■3

manifest in family discord. The tendency is emphatically in the
direction of a wide disparity in the ages as between men and wom¬
en. Of 238 male heads of families, forty years old and over, only
53, or 22.3 per cent, had wives within the same age bracket. This
story of youth married to old age, as told by the husband, sheds

light on some of the indefinable dissatisfactions at the bottom of
many of these separations:

She was just too young for me. She was only eighteen when I married
her and I was about forty-five. I lived with her several years, though.
She was a little woman, didn’t weigh but ninety pounds. She fust went
off and stayed a week, then she come back and we stayed in bed till
’bout noon, then I got up and went to the field and she went visiting.
I didn’t know whether she was gonna stay or not. She come back and
asked me for the key so she could take a nap and I give it to her. I guess
she took a nap. I know she stayed up there a long time, then she come
back and give me the key and told me goodbye. I just kept my head
turned till I knowed she was out of sight. Look like to me if I’d a turned
and seed her going way from me I’d jest hollered so loud. Look like it
would a killed me when she fust left. Yes, I did like her, but I’m gitting
along all right without her now. Course I could a got a divorce without
paying all that money. I could a paid a man to say he done something,
but I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t slander her ’cause she’d been a good
wife to me when we was together, so I jest said if I had to give anybody
money, I’d jest give it to her.

Family interference has been noted among the causes of separa¬
tion. The pull of family, on both sides, is frequently strong enough
to exercise an important influence over relations.

Me and my husband was gitting long fine when we went to live with
his people. Den when I be in family way his people didn’t treat me right.
I tole him we oughta move. There was so many chillun in that house.
There was twelve in all — my three and then some of the rest of the chil¬
lun done married and brought their chillun back home. We all uster
work on the farm together, and when I would go in the garden to get
some onions his mother tell me to stay out of the garden. I couldn’t get
nothing outa the garden after I done help to plant it. I kept on like that
till one day my husband packed up my things and sent me back home to
my people. I ain’t blaming him for what he did, ’cause he was home with
his peoples and he done what they say. You know he be’s a child at
home jest like the rest of the chillun.

A course of regular and unemotional breeding has been given as
a cause of separation, and is explained in the observation about
men “getting you with a house full of babies and leaving.” Before
the limit is reached, however, the woman may leave.

Incompatibility, based upon color difference, has figured in the
list of separations. “She was light-complected and nothing suited
her. We jest couldn’t ’gree on nothing much, and so we quit.’’ In
this instance there was another factor. The present wife chided
the man about not telling all of the truth. “How come you don’t
tell why you separated ? He caught her with a white man. I believe
in telling the truth.”

Women have become disgusted finally with men who “run ’roun
too much,” and have left them. “I been married twice. Both my
wives left me. They jest said I run ’bout after the women. But
they ’cuse me wrong.”

Separation seems to place little strain upon the relations of the
various parties concerned in these affairs. Alice Jackson’s com¬
mon-law husband and her first husband, from whom she had not
secured a divorce, worked on a job together. Her legal husband
was contentedly settled with another woman and her children.
“This my third husband. We ain’t married. He was the chillun’s
pappy. Den I married a man and couldn’t get along, so I come
back to live wid him. He works with my real husband.” The sister
of another woman’s husband continues to live in the family al¬
though her brother has been displaced entirely by another and
more congenial mate.

What happens when there has been exposure to new standards
is clear cut and unmistakable. Jacob Wagner is a widower with
one married and three unmarried daughters, twenty, eighteen, six¬
teen, and fifteen years old, respectively. His wife had been dead
about six months and the responsibility for their care was upon
him. Although he had only gone as far as the fourth grade in
school, he had been a member of the First Baptist Church School
Board, and work on the railroad had carried him frequently out
of the city. He knew the significance of separation and divorce
and had taught it to his daughters. When he mentioned the pos¬
sibility of marrying again because he needed a wife “to help me
with the girls,” the daughters were indignant that he could think
of marrying again so soon after the mother’s death. Discussing the
question of the oldest daughter’s marriage, he made it clear that it

met every requirement. “If he [her husband] had never obtained
a divorce he could never have married my daughter. Anybody
marries my daughter’s got to plumb the line.”

WHAT IS RESPECTABLE?

The families of the community do not act upon a single standard
of propriety or of morals. Ideals and life-conceptions vary strik¬
ingly, not only with respect to content, but with respect to defini¬
tion and emphasis. There is, moreover, an extraordinary over¬
lapping and fusing of traits and heritages in a community which
holds its members with varying degrees of cohesion. Notions of
respectability rest upon the social customs which have grown up
with the group, upon an adaptation of the early social patterns
to which they were exposed, and upon the newer patterns which
are being slowly introduced.

It is possible to trace roughly some of these standards by refer¬
ence to degrees of isolation. Geographical remoteness from the
centers of sophistication and cultural change is important but not
the only determining factor in isolation. The old traditions per¬
sist virtually unchanged in some families, whether they live near
the highway or far in the back country. The present picture, how¬
ever, is one of confusion, arising from the conflict of different ideals
and ways of life. A family will reflect one set of moral ideas re¬
garding marriage and another regarding divorce, or one regarding
legitimacy and another regarding extra-marital sex relations. Gen¬
erally speaking, home-ownership and education tend to mark these
differences in standards.

It is important to point out first what seems to be a conformity
to the conventions of the group itself without reference to outside
standards and ideals. One family with two unmarried daughters,
both of whom had several children, had very positive notions
about what was respectable and what was not. The father stressed
the responsibility of his family to the children of his daughters,
discounting the value of marriage as such. He was satisfied to
keep out of contact with the law. In personal relations his attitude

was that of the frontier, relying upon his ability to effect a personal
settlement of differences which ordinarily are handled in the
courts.

Ain’t none of my daughters got married but dey is my chillun, and I
take care of all of dem. The fathers of dey chillun don’t come here less
dey come right. I tell ’em all to stay way from my house. I don’t git
into no trouble with nobody. I am dis old and never been to jail, never
been handcuffed or had a fight. My brothers git into trouble, but I
ain’t never had a fight. I keep my gun near ’cause if anyone tries to
bother me, gonna shoot ’em shore. Gonna shoot ’em shore.

It is not regarded as the proper thing to demand or even to ask
the father of an unmarried woman’s child to support the child.
“No, these babies don’t git no help from dey daddies. Help, noth¬
ing! I wouldn’t let them beg them to do it for nothing in the world.
I wouldn’t bother them for a pocket handkerchief. They don’t git
no help atall from dey daddies’ side.” Another woman with chil¬
dren “by the way” explained: “Sherman Biggers is the daddy of
two of dem. Sherman gives Bertha a dress now and den, but he
don’t give her no money. I don’t worry him for it ’cause I don’t
see him have it.”

On the other hand, there is the suggestion of approval if the
responsibility of the father is assumed without prompting. “This
here baby is my daughter’s baby. She is jest fifteen years old her¬
self. The father paid the doctor bills and give it clothes.”

Community gossip exercises restraint, but in certain cases in
which the question of “illegitimacy” was an issue, the direction of
this control was away from marriage. The mother of a young girl
who had a child by the son of a neighbor refused to let her daughter
marry the boy, in spite of mutual desires, because the mother of
the boy had made uncomplimentary remarks about the girl. “My
oldest daughter ain’t married and she has a baby seven days old.
The baby’s father, why he’s up the road there ’bout two miles from
here. His mamma jest talked ’bout her so I wouldn’t let her marry
him. She tried to ‘scandalize’ her name.” It would be a mistake to
assume from the practices current that there is indifference to
standards. Indeed, there is a rather rigid conformity to those

standards of the group which are distilled from personal experi¬
ence rather than from the abstractions of moral philosophy.

There are limits to the sexual freedom tolerated, and when these
limits are reached violators are treated with unmistakable group
disapproval. The community, for example, has its gay Lotharios,
who exploit existing conventions to their advantage. A young
man, illiterate but loose and boastful, was discussing marriage.
He said if he married and could not get along, “then I quits and
marries again. I got six more [wives] coming/’ Someone remarked
that his father had been married to the same woman forty years,
and he replied: “De Bible say go ’round and see about the ofren
[orphan] chillun.” This last was intended as a ribald paraphrase of
the Bible to give swagger to his sexual promiscuity. Community
disapproval was certain and severe on the man who violated local
usages by refusing to assume any responsibility. “He’s a yaller
boy who ain’t done nothing but go ’round and fool all these girls.
That was the second time he done make foolments on her, too,
’cause she lost the other one.” The community also has its “fast
women,” but they are not the familiar “prostitute” type. Rather,
they are women who flaunt, with their sex, the dominant economic
concern and interest of the group. They are the ones who mali¬
ciously, and to no useful end, steal other women’s men and through
the men the earnings to which another woman has made an im¬
portant contribution. One woman in commenting about such a
character said: “She go ’round braggin’ she don’t spend no money.
She got ’em workin’ for her. You be workin’ and she goin’ ’round
dressed up like ‘Miss Ann’ while you go naked.” The usual conno¬
tation of “fastness” in women had less relationship to sex morals
than to age of sexual maturity. “I was a fast little thing; up and
married at thirteen. (That man jest kept goin’ and cornin’ back,
till finally he jest didn’t come back at all.)” There are women who
give their favors freely, but seldom on a purely commercial basis.

On the other hand, there is a strong current of approval of alli¬
ances, whether legal or not, which offer the highest chances of sur¬
vival in the environment. A mother who had never been married
said: “I ain’t want no husband myself, and I don’t care if Alder

[her daughter] marries or no. Willis [father of Alder’s child] is a
smart man. Alder’s father asked me to marry him, but I tole him
I don’ want no husband.”

A common-sense view of marriage in this setting classifies it as a
serious hazard. There is no more steady, hard-working woman in
the community than Della Promise. She knows how to keep her¬
self and her house clean, belongs to church and to several societies,
manages her children with notable success, and in other respects
is regular and reliable. She has never been married, and has no
apologies to make about it. Seriously and with conviction she said:
“Everybody don’t git married, and if I can’t git the one I want I
don’t want to git married. I never seen but one boy I thought I
could marry, and me and him had ways too much alike, and I
knowed we couldn’t git along, so I jest has my chillun and raises
’em myself.” Married life imposes certain obligations which are,
in the feeling of this element of the community, more binding than
necessary or practicable. It gives license to mistreatment; it im¬
poses the risk of unprofitable husbands; and it places an impossible
tax upon freedom in the form of a divorce. For example: “Men
jest git you a house full of chillun and leave you.” Or again: “I
been married but my husband been too mean. He beated me too
much. Dis man I’m livin’ wid now ain’t like him. He’s nice. I
like him. I been thinkin’ ’bout marrying, but I don’t want to
marry now.”

It is, in a very practical sense, less respectable to be beaten by
one’s husband than to be living with a man peacefully and happily,
though not married to him. The lack of legal obligation acts as a
restraint upon mistreatment, for the services of the woman are of
very real importance to the man. As Artie Joe McDaniel, who has
been living with Robert Jackson for several years, said with some
pride in her independence: “He’s nice all right, but I ain’t thinking
’bout marrying. Soon as you marry a man he starts mistreating you,
and I’m not going to be mistreated no more.” Experience dictates
numerous expressions of caution on the part of the older women.

If you ain’t married don’t you eber go git yourself no rainbow. First
thing you know you’ll be sick of it.

Ain’t nobody got nothing to give me but God, and if I don’t trust him
I’m lost.

Men ain’t nothin’ but overalls.

Better git a good holt ’fore you git into this marryin’ business, ’cause
there’ll be some tight times if you don’t.

Gambling is condemned. This is no doubt a result of the in¬
fluence of the church with its prohibition of indulgence in certain
forms of worldliness. Any form of life-activity which does not in¬
volve obvious and direct manual labor may be said to be under
suspicion and disapproval. A possible exception is the religious
ministry, and most of the preachers who reside in the community
are also farmers.

Likewise, the influence of the prohibition of the church is seen,
somewhat unfortunately, in the ban on baseball, but with pro¬
found wisdom in the disapproval of the secular “frolics.” “I don’t
go to them frolics. People git drunk and comes back and tries to
show everybody who dey is.” Frolics are not respectable. One
woman, expressing her disapproval of them, based this disapproval
on the fact that “they don’t show the right respect for women.”
She explained the meaning of “respect” by saying that they had
“splashed a woman’s brains out last Saturday night.” The follow¬
ing account by the mother of a boy who had killed a woman at
another of these affairs both characterizes the “frolics” and helps
to define the proper sphere of women.

My son John was a good boy. They tell me that the woman what he
killed was dancing on the floor that night. She hadn’t been long settin’
down. It was jest awful. John didn’t give up till yesterday, and when he
did give up they got the boy what lent him the pistol too. See how kin
folks git one ’nother in trouble? I guess, though, they can’t do nothing
but make him pay for loaning John that pistol. He wasn’t after that
chile he killed. He jest couldn’t rest, I reckon, till he give hisself up. If
John hadn’t had that pistol he wouldn’t a shot it, and if that woman had
stayed at home she wouldn’t a got killed. I don’t believe in women goin’
to these suppers. They ought to stay at home where they belong.

Quite apart from the question of sex, respectability has other
concerns in this level of the culture of the group. One of the most

frequent assertions in evidence of respectability is the fact that no
one of the family has been in jail. The Boyd family is one of the
oldest in the community. There are 26 children in the family, of
whom 1 1 are still living — 5 girls and 6 boys — all born since slavery.
Said one of these: “Papa rents from the man what set him free.
We have never been nowhere else but right here. Papa died right
over there; all of us live on this plantation. None of us ever been in
prison or in suits or nothing. We are always in hopes of getting
something.” An old man who had several grown sons in the neigh¬
borhood gave this formula of success: “I works hard to keep out of
lawsuits and trouble. Nobody don’t bother me, and I don’t bother
nobody.”

A practice which has the disapproval of the group is begging.
The sentiment is well expressed by one of the older members of the
community in her comment when she heard that a neighbor had
asked a stranger for some money for food and snuff. She was caus¬
tic in her criticism: “I don’t ’cept charity from nobody. I don’t
tote a bucket ’round under my dress beggin’. Work is honorable
and good. I believe in it. ’Tain’t livin’ right to go beggin’.” Work
is a virtue even though there are lazy members in the group. Wom¬
en are justified in leaving husbands who are lazy and trifling. More
than this, the values attached to work transcend those attached to
legitimacy. “Me and my husband been parted three years. We
couldn’t git along. He was so mean. He ain’t helped me none. He
was jest so lazy, he didn’t wanna work. He ain’t none of my child’s
father. The daddy is dead. I never was married to my child’s
daddy.” The community standing of this woman and her own self-
respect were such that she felt completely free to censure the be¬
havior of the young school-teacher who came from the outside.
“She was pretty good, but last year she wasn’t nothing but a little
courtin’ girl. The big boys wouldn’t go to school. She was so
young they didn’t want her to teach them.”

Begging is, however, different from mutual assistance between
neighbors. This is probably the root of that same mutualism which
is reflected in the case of newly arrived southern immigrants to the
North. They are at first most reticent about applying to the public

agencies for relief, despite their poverty. There is a common dis¬
position to help one another with food and shelter. When they
become more sophisticated they discover in these agencies a mys¬
terious means of getting something for nothing, which holds dan¬
gers both to working habits and to self-respect.

The families in the community, clinging to their own standards
of respectability, found it difficult at first to adjust themselves to
the policies of the Red Cross, although these services are now wide¬
ly used. One of the families, although poor, was outraged and
humiliated by the organization’s method of determining the need
for assistance. Said the wife:

My husband went to the Red Cross to get the money they owed him,
’cause his son died in the army. The Red Cross ain’t never give us
nothing. When my husband gone down there they was so pikus and close,
and ain’t give us nothing. There was an old man down there wid a lot of
chilluns, and they ain’t give him nothing neither. They jest lecture and
act indifferent. They make you feel so shame over the way you have to
git it, you don’t want it.

When Fannie Ford, who had worked all her life and lived hard,
reached the point of being unable to purchase either food or cloth¬
ing, she still maintained her pride. “Folks say, ‘Sister Fannie, you
go on down to the Red Cross.’ I said, ‘Jesus don’t send me there,’
but they ain’t done nothing anyhow. No, I don’t ask ’em. I don’t
like to be a charitable person. I jest went ’long and made out
somehow.” Thus, an enlightened piece of human engineering
which provides a device for necessary relief may arouse a conflict
of ideals of respectability no less significant than in the clash of
two cultures.

Clearly enough, a transition from the imperatives of one cultural
level to that of another is taking place, and this change is being
manifested in other ways more advantageous to the group. There
is a reaching-out for the new standards, although these standards
are not as yet always adequately conceived. Definitions of the
situation are frequently mixed and confused. Illegitimacy, for ex¬
ample, though regarded by some families as something not entirely
to be countenanced, is considered by others a lesser social evil and

affront to decency than desertion following a forced marriage.
Mary Blyden was conscious of a certain personal superiority over
her neighbors. She attributes this advancement, of which she is
pardonably proud, to the fact that she likes to associate with
“cultured people.”

I don’t get into no trouble ’cause I love to be with cultural people.
They always trying to have something. Them others they always trying
to git something for nothing. The Bible say “seek and ye shall find,”
and they got more time to seek then wre have, ’cause while we out there
in the field they ’round seeking. This is my daughter’s child [illegitimate]
here. His father’s name Asbestos Key. He Maggie Key’s son. He ain’t
do nothing for the child. You know these young people has a peculiar
way of doing things now. They go from house to house dropping chillun
just like an old house cat. I don’t believe in forcing ’em to marry,
though. I had a cousin once and her father forced the man to marry her
and after the marriage was all over he walked out one door and she the
other, and they ain’t seed one another since. This ’suading and coaxing
and begging ’em to marry jest ain’t get you no place. It’s my child so I
take it as my ’sponsibility.

A shade removed from this attitude is that represented by a
family in which the mother showed no sensitiveness about her
daughter’s illegitimate children, but the daughter, on the other
hand, withdrew in embarrassment when the subject came up. The
younger generation is slowly picking up new notions although they
cannot always escape the current of the old life to make the shift
to the new.

The female head of another family, with four children in school,
felt warranted in setting her own notions to the conventions of the
community. She said with pride: “I don’t believe much in these
stolen children. Me, I married in my mother’s house before I broke
my virtue.”

Freedom from the economic compulsions of the life of the com¬
munity carries with it almost invaryingly a corresponding freedom
from many of the social customs. The family of Cox’s have lived in
the community over eighteen years, own eighty acres of land for
which they paid twenty-two dollars an acre, and have sent their
children to school. One daughter, who teaches a four-month-term

school in Russell County, has attended a summer session at Ala¬
bama State College. When the mother was asked about the mari¬
tal status of her children, she said none of her girls was married,
and added emphatically, “Neither of them has had any children
either.” The remark, as well as the emphasis, was offered without
prompting and reflected a new consciousness to the changing
mores. The father in this family raised cotton but also did public
work and hauling. By this means, and aided by his sons, he accu¬
mulated enough cash for a part payment of one thousand dollars
on his house and farm. The family wore very good clothing but
adhered to the custom of going barefoot. The family organization
follows roughly the essential pattern of the community with re¬
spect to the family economic unit, but this has been modified in
such a manner as to avoid the ordinary stresses of the system. The
sons live in the household but cultivate plots which they rent from
their father, paying him back in cotton.

Thomas Germany has lived in the county twenty-seven years.
He owns his farm of one hundred and twenty-nine acres for which
he paid twenty-eight hundred dollars in 1904. He can “read a
little,” although his wife is illiterate, but all of the five grandchil¬
dren whom they are rearing are in school. They made a point of
stressing that they had never “been in trouble.” The mother still
uses the community midwife instead of a doctor, although she has
now lost respect for this practice. She is convinced that she lost
her last baby through the ignorance and carelessness of the mid¬
wife, but the pressure of the group impels her to continue using a
midwife rather than get talked about. Although the house is in
poor repair it is inclosed with a fence — something very unusual in
the section. There are blinds at the windows and a lightning rod
on the roof. They have planted a fruit orchard. These were in¬
dices to the family. It happened that the wife had been married
before, and she was asked where she secured her divorce. The an¬
swer was a retort with considerable feeling: “Where else do you
suppose I got the divorce if not at the courthouse?” The family
had few friends in the community and wanted but few. They get
along now by “tending to their own business.” One of the grand-

children is illegitimate and the family is miserably conscious of the
sin of the daughter.

Edgar Hill is one of the few mulatto men observed to be married
to a woman of perceptibly darker complexion. They have a pleas¬
ant home life, and although they are not home-owners they have
well-defined notions about marriage and family relations. There
was an expression of indignation when the question was asked if
the woman was the mother of all the children in the family. “She
is my wife; who else would be the mother?” Similarly, the man
raised his eyebrows in shocked surprise when asked if they had
ever been separated and shouted “No.” To still another question
regarding sleeping with the windows open (a practice extremely
uncommon in the community) he answered, “Yes, we sleep with
the windows open and doors too.”

A further indication of the changing mores appears in the ex¬
perience of Sherman Riggs who has thirteen children — eleven by
his wife and two by a woman neighbor. He regards himself as an
upright man, trying to do what is best. He was an officer in the
church and is in good standing in the societies. Conflict in his mind
arose over the question of marrying the woman by whom he had
had several children, to satisfy new notions about legitimacy and
respectability.

I get lonesome lots of times but a man is crazy to see something won’t do
and then walk in it. I done tried it [referring to his period of common-law
association with his woman neighbor]. I mean by that just like you have
a pencil, if you saw it wouldn’t write you wouldn’t bother with it. A new
broom sweeps clean, and when I marries I wants to marry for pleasure.
The fellow pecking the rock can see more than the fellow not pecking the
rock. I like Minty all right, but now a fellow’s got to use common sense.
The world is so critical now a fellow is scared to do anything. I left off most
of my frolics when I was young. But common sense got to come in. You
tak’ a cow and tie it out before a lot of grass — the cow will bite first one
bunch of grass then another, trying to see which one he likes the best;
so that the way with a man.

Despite the unevenness of life, the amount of sexual freedom,
the frequency of separation and realignment of families, the num¬
ber of children born out of formal wedlock and the customary

provisions for them, codes and conventions consistent with the
essential routine of their lives do arise which represent a form of or¬
ganization adapted to the total environment. Where social proc¬
esses such as these proceed largely unconsciously, the surviving folk
ways may reasonably be presumed to have a foundation in the
fundamental needs of community and human nature. The mar¬
riage relation under slavery, despite its lack of the sanctions by the
dominant society, had some seriousness of purpose for the slaves
and was forced to accommodate itself to the convenience of th-
institution of slavery with respect to continuity, fertility, selection
of mates, change of mates, the quasi-eugenic demands of the in¬
stitution with respect to breeding, and similar circumstances.

It is scarcely conceivable that the isolation of this group at any
point could be so complete as to prevent the introduction of a dif¬
ferent body of sentiments and practices in accord with a more
advanced conception of life and of social relations. The total situa¬
tion, thus, would be expected to represent different stages of
cultural evolution, from the almost complete acceptance of the
original sanctions of the group under slave tradition to the fullest
acceptance of the new codes introduced, whether thoroughly com¬
prehended or not. Disorganization is most acute where these sanc¬
tions are in conflict and the individuals are firmly rooted in neither
of the patterns of life-organization.

SHELTER AND FOOD
. . . Somewheres to sleep and sumpin’ t’eat.”

The cabin of the Jenifers can be reached by a ragged and wind¬
ing path half obscured by a field of growing cotton. The path,
although beaten down and fresh with use, does not trace a direct
course, but meanders almost furtively through the field, down the
side of a gulley, then over and around a tongue of thick-set trees
and brush, all without apparent reason. If you ask a neighbor how
to get to the Jenifers’ house, he will first point to a wide arc of a
road over which a team of horses could travel, and which skirts
respectfully the proprietorial boundaries of the cotton fields.

9°

(Tramping through the cotton is something akin to vandalism.)
When and if he is surer of you, he will point to the path under your
eye and suggest that you follow it ‘ca little piece over the way.”

The home of the Jenifers is set in the midst of a new stretch of
cotton beyond the trees, and once there, no other dwelling is
visible. Around the dwelling is a cleared space packed hard and
yellow. On the left, and beginning a few feet from the house, is an
inclosed area about the size of a bedroom. It is the family garden,
and into it has been crowded a patch of cabbage, greens, and
onions which the family has attempted to shield from marauding
animals and the younger children by a fence randomly constructed
of sticks, tin advertising signs, tar paper, and stray bits of canvas.
The house itself is constructed of upright boards about a foot wide
with thin strips down the seams to keep out the weather. It is set
rather precariously about a foot from the ground upon four up¬
rights of rocks placed one upon the other and held plumb by the
weight of the house alone. On first sight it gives the appearance of
two single-room cabins set close together and joined by a roof. The
passageway, however, has a rough flooring like the two inclosed
rooms, and this passageway is called the “dog-run.” The soft wood
of the floor has been worn into smooth and grimy ruts, testifying
to the habits of the family.

The dog-run is an important part of the house. It is the sitting-
out place, and in summer, especially, it is the meeting place for the
family. They rest, eat, doze, and gossip there. Two benches fash¬
ioned after a simple pattern are planted against the wall. On the
end of one of these is a battered wooden water pail covered over
with a damp cloth. A pair of overalls and a man’s hat, both frayed
and dusted white with earth, hang from a nail support. A tub and
washing stick, a pair of men’s heavy shoes, a rusty water-dipper,
and pieces of firewood also find a place in this areaway. From the
front of the house there is a sweep which permits a view of the
family well at the rear with its box-shaped covering, its sagging
and insecure sides, its top open and exposed to sundry deposits.

Doorways lead off the dog-run into the two rooms. In one of
these rooms, where Father and Mother Jenifer sleep, there is a

large bed with a double mattress, one of shucks, the other of
feathers, and they are covered over with a quilt patched laborious¬
ly from an indeterminate variety of cloth scraps into an intricate
pattern of squares. They call it, modestly, a “crazy quilt. ” The
bed is the outstanding piece of furniture. Besides this article there
is a wooden box spread over with a newspaper, a rocking chair, and
a small table on which stands a kerosene lamp with a broken
chimney. Some pride of home has gone into the effort to select
newspapers with colored pictures for the wall covering and to keep
it reasonably fresh. There are no glass windows. For light and air
a board window is pushed open. But this can be done comfortably
only in spring and summer, and at other times the family contents
itself with light from the open fireplace, where, incidentally, the
cooking is also done. On any day when the window and door are
closed, sharp slices of light, from the sides of the house and from
the roof, spatter the room with shadows. When it rains or the
winds blow cold, these interstices bring a great deal of inescapable
discomfort.

The second room is little different from the first. It has its bed
under which most of the miscellaneous possessions of the family
are stored, a larder consisting of a couple of shelves in one corner
of the room, and underneath this a pile of seed cotton. There is an
accumulation of soiled and worn clothing and bed coverings in and
near an open box.

This is the home of the Jenifers, father, mother, two sons, a
daughter and her infant. The other belongings of the family, to be
precise, are one plow (now in serious disrepair), two hoes, two
frying-pans, an iron pot, several tin plates, four pounds of salt
pork and a bag of corn meal, church clothes, an insurance policy,
a Bible, two almanacs, and a bottle of “Black Draught” med¬
icine.

The family is not a fictitious one but is taken directly from the
largest group in the physical classification of homes. Over half of
the 612 families live in the one- and two-room cabins, and 175, or
28 per cent, live in three-room cabins. One hundred and sixty-two
of these cabins, or 25 per cent, had been standing over thirty years;

OVER HALF OF THE 612 FAMILIES LIVE IN
ONE- AND TWO-ROOM CABINS

NEIGHBORS

74 per cent of them had been built more than sixteen years before.
Few of the houses have glass windows, only blinds, and there were
some with no window spaces at all. Many of those families who
had windows in their cabins slept with both windows and doors
tightly closed in summer and winter, professing variously to be
afraid of prowlers, mosquitoes, night air, thieves, and ghosts. Five
hundred and thirteen of the 612 families, however, had small gar¬
dens. Seeds for these gardens had been distributed by the Red
Cross during the year, and proved to be a most valuable contribu¬
tion to this group.

With the exception of a few homes owned by Negro farmers, the
dwellings available for the tenants present a dreary monotony of
weatherworn cabins. The physical pattern varies but slightly, and
there are not enough houses of better model and construction
about to incite interest in anything different. It is a standard of
housing so widespread and so far inferior to the towns as to make
extremely difficult any comparable measurement. For greater con¬
venience and exactness of measurement, the physical features of
the housing of this area have been projected on a simple scale.
This, at least, has the advantage of objective description over the
more indeterminate classification of good, fair, and bad. This
scale takes into account the materials of the structure, age, condi¬
tion of roof, windows and floors, porch and steps, space, modern
conveniences for the farm home, kind and condition of heating,
lighting and sanitation; and gives a reasonably balanced valuation
for each item in a total of 100 points.

Six hundred and eight dwellings were measured. A frame house,
for example, which had been recently painted, was five to ten years
old, with sound roof, floors, windows, screens, running water, an
inside toilet or septic tank, a bath tub, electric light or perhaps
kerosene lamps, and a stove for cooking, may receive a score of
between 75 and 90. Exceptional dwellings may reach the full 100
score by the possession of quite reasonably attainable modern con¬
veniences. A lack of any of these items, as in the matter of defec¬
tive flooring, broken or missing windows, leaking roof, would regis¬
ter in lower scores.

Of these 608 homes in Macon County, the largest number, 185,
or 30.4 per cent, rated between 30 and 40. The modal house was
thus about a third of what would be expected for minimum effi¬
ciency. The mean score was 35, or slightly over the mode. The
lowest score was 12 and the highest 60.

Ownership of occupational implements and of cultural artifacts
may be taken roughly as an indication of rural efficiency and,
perhaps, of the extent to which new material traits are being ac¬
quired. In order, thus, to relate the ownership of these articles to

TABLE V

Scores on Physical Housing in 608 Families in Macon
County, Alabama, June-July, 1931

Scores

Homes

Scores

Homes

°~ 4 .

. O

45-49 .

.... 55

5-9 .

. O

5°~54 .

. . . . 23

10-14 .

. I

55-59 .

. . . . 6

•5 l9 .

. 2

60—64 .

. . . . 2

20—24 .

. l6

65~69 .

. . . . 0

25-29 .

. 72

70-74 .

. . . . 0

3°~34 .

. 185

35-39 .

. 138

Total ....

. . . . 608

4°"~44 .

. I08

the home, additional values were given to the total of 25, and these
combined with individual housing scores. In 608 families there
were 392, or 64.4 per cent of the families with neither agricultural
implements nor cultural instruments of any sort. In 736 families
in Gibson County, Tennessee, an area of mixed farming, 116, or
15 per cent, of the families fall in this classification. The central
scores were least affected by the addition of these values while the
higher physical housing scores and those just below the median
were considerably improved.

The low average of these scores not only corresponds closely
with direct observation, but stands out conspicuously as low scores
when compared with another rural Negro county of a different
type of background. The area used for comparison is Gibson Coun¬
ty, Tennessee, which is not a plantation area but one predominant-

ly of small farms. It is one of the poorer sections of Tennessee,
and has no tradition of the plantation since it has always been an
area of small farmers. The Negro population is only 30 per cent

CHART I

Scores on Physical Housing in 608 Macon County Homes as Compared with
Scores on Physical Housing in 736 Gibson County Homes

of the total, as compared with 82.3 per cent in Macon County,
and 31 per cent of the Negro population own their homes as com¬
pared with 10 per cent in Macon County. The difference, as meas¬
ured by the same scale, is most striking. The median in Gibson
County is 46.6 as compared with 36.01 in Macon County. The
lowest score in Gibson County was 23 and the highest 91. Homes

TABLE VI

Total Scores of Physical Housing, Cultural Instruments,
and Occupational Implements in 608 Families in Macon
County, Alabama, June-July, 1931

Scores

Homes

Scores

Homes

4 .

. O

50-54 .

. 64

5-9 .

. O

55-59 .

. 21

10-14 .

. I

60—64 .

. 17

15- >9 .

. I

65_69 .

. IO

20-24 .

. 9

7^74 .

. 3

25-29 .

. 46

75-79 .

. 1

30-34 .

. 106

80—84 .

. 2

35-39 .

. 118

85-89 .

. 2

4°-44 .

. 112

90-94 .

. 1

45-49 .

. 94

95-99 .

. 0

TABLE VII

Scores on Physical Housing in Macon County, Alabama, as
Compared with Scores on Physical Housing in
Gibson County, Tennessee

o „ „ Macon County Gibson County

bcores Homes Homes

0-4 . O O

5-9 . ° °

10-14 . I O

15-19 . 2 O

20-24 . 1 6 2

25-29 . 72 13

30-34 . 185 5°

35-39 . >3S 101

40-44 . 108 159

45-49 . 55 !34

50-54 . 23 1 14

55-59 . 5 85

60—64 . 2 48

65-69 . o 14

7°~74 . 0 9

75-79 . 0 3

80-84 . o 2

85-89 . O I

90-94 . O I

r,**

CABINS IN THE COTTON

of owners in both states had consistently higher rating than those
of tenants.

It is possible to give more specific description of these houses in
relation to ratings. Dwelling 165 has a score of 35, which approxi¬
mates the median score of the dwellings. It is a two-room, un¬
painted board structure with a lean-to kitchen, and has been
standing over ten years. The roof leaks, the floors are weak, and
the steps are broken. Well-paned windows let in light and air.
Kerosene lamps are used for lighting, and a stove and fireplace for
cooking and heating. There is a well within fifty feet of the house
but no means outside or within are available for sewage disposal
or bathing. With respect to cultural and occupational implements,
there are no books, musical instruments; neither hoes, plows,
rakes, nor other occupational tools.

Dwelling 87 has a score of 35. It has two sleeping-rooms, a
lean-to kitchen, a projecting porch, and is some thirty years old.
Its occupants had whitewashed it ten years ago. Dim vestiges
of this coating now remain. The roof leaks, the porch is tumbling
down, and the broken and paneless windows lend an air of deser¬
tion to the place. There are, however, good steps and substantial
floors. Six people live here but without a source of water supply
on the place. They go to the neighbor’s well for water. Projecting
itself behind a clump of bushes, about twelve yards from the house,
is an open privy in advanced disrepair. There is no provision for
bathing. Kerosene lamps are used for lighting and the fireplace for
cooking.

The Townsends live in a house which is given a score of 59.
This is one of the better homes. It is a one-story frame structure
of five rooms. Each room is ventilated and lighted by one glass
window and all of the windows are intact. The house, however,
has never been painted since its erection fifteen years ago. Roof,
floors, steps, and porches are substantial. The family has a fire¬
place and stove, kerosene lamps; uses well water, and has an open
privy. There are no special facilities for bathing and no modern
conveniences other than an automobile.

The Jones family scores 56. Five months before the family had

moved to their present quarters to “better conditions.” The age of
the house was approximately fifteen years, but it had not been
painted since erection. Floors, roof, steps, and porches were in
good condition. Windows and doors were screened. There was an
open privy but no bath. Kerosene lamps were used but there was
no water on the place.

The best dwelling in the group was an owned home. It was a
brick-and-frame structure, recently built and painted with roof,
floor, porches in good repair, and all openings screened. There was
an open privy in the yard but no running water. The family had
an automobile but no other modern conveniences.

The lowest scores of 12 and 18 merely illustrate the egregious
extremes in physical housing possible under the prevailing condi¬
tions of life in the county. No house in Gibson County approached
the lowest group of buildings in Macon County. The score of 12
was given on a perilously dilapidated one-room log cabin known to
be over thirty years old. It was without windows, the roof was
buckled and crumbling, the chimney had caved in and constituted
a constant menace to the occupant. There was no water near the
place and no toilet, no floor, no provision for bathing, no lighting.
It was occupied by an old woman and her adopted child.

The attitude of tenants toward these dwellings varies interest¬
ingly. For some, their quarters are “all right for common folks like
us.” They neither know nor want anything different. There are
others who are satisfied to live where they are although they are
aware of the inadequacy of their shelter. Some voice complaints
with vehemence; some whisper them out of fear of incurring the
displeasure of the landlords; and some accept their discomfort with
the good-natured tolerance which they exhibit toward other facts
of a hopeless situation.

When one tenant housewife was asked about her house, she re¬
marked with resigned disgust: “ ’Scuse me, but dis ain’t no house.

We stayed here outdoors all last year, waiting for Mr. - to

come fix us a place to live, but he ain’t come yit. When it rains we
hafter git up alongside the wall and when the rain’s over we hafter
put all the stuff outside to dry.”

Another woman commented: “My house is so rotten you kin
jest take up the boards in your hand and cromple ’em up. Every¬
thing done swunk about it.”

These observations were by no means exaggerations. The ex¬
tremely cheap construction of the dwellings and their age made it
inevitable that they should soon become uninhabitable except for
persons adjusted to a primitive type of dwellings. The extrava¬
gance of their disrepair prompts some of those who must never¬
theless live in them to equally extravagant though harmless state¬
ments of disgust. At one home the mother was asked if her house
leaked. She seemed to be overwhelmed by the naivete of the ques¬
tion and controlled herself before answering, because she had just
experienced a rain. “Do it leak in here?” she repeated with com¬
plete amazement, and then answered, “No, it don’t leak in here,
it jest rains in here and leak outdoors; dis ain’t no house; it jest a
piece a house. I got a great mind to take a hammer and knock it
down.” Other complaints, where there was the spirit to complain,
followed the same type:

He [the landlord] come here five years ago and say he going to fix this
old house up. All he’s give us since then is a few planks to fix the porch.
Its nothin’ doin’. We jest living outdoors.

This house so open I get plenty of fresh air. I raised up seven girls and
two boys right here . I’m jest staying round here fighting and pray¬

ing. I’d be glad if I could git me a comfortable home but folks won’t let
you have nothing less you mortgage it and when you git it all fixed up
they come in and take it. So I jest leaves it like it is.

This house is mighty cold in the winter time. I’m old and my blood is
thin. I got seven quilts and I put all them on the bed and I almost freeze.
The wind jest shoots through the cracks and gets the bedticks cold and
I can’t get warm for nothing.

My health was good ’fore I come here. I had’t took no medicine from a
doctor in fifteen years ’fore I come here to this house; it was jest so cold
in here I got a cold and took the flu and had to have the doctor that
same winter I come here. I said it was this old cold house ’cause I come
out of a sealed house; this old cold tin give it to me.

As to toilet facilities, 310 used open privies near by the house,
296 had no sewage disposal. Two hundred and fifty-eight used
open wells for their water supply, 243 used well-pumps, 32 used
springs, and 81 families had no water on the place at all.

Such dwellings and surroundings constitute a dreary setting for
families and their children. One reaction to this is the constant
wandering-about in search of something better, with respect to
both housing and labor terms. The crowding-together of families
in these small rooms destroys all privacy, dulls the desire for neat¬
ness and cleanliness, and renders virtually impossible the develop¬
ment of any sense of beauty. It is a cheerless condition of life
with but few avenues of escape even for those who keep alive a
flickering desire for something better.

Diet

The chief foods are listed, as a simple indication of food habits.
These items of food in winter are salt meat, corn or flour bread,
and syrup or sorghum. Few vegetables are eaten. There is a com¬
mon belief that “greens are feverish.” Milk is sometimes used, but
few have cows. Sweet potatoes are used when available. The meals
vary little, even during the day. “I don’t eat no supper ’cause I git
tired of the same thing all the time.” Breakfast consists commonly
of corn bread and syrup. A heavy meal with meat is eaten for sup¬
per. The fortunate ones are those who have been able to put away
potatoes for the winter and who have a “shoat” to kill at Christ¬
mas. A large number of families — sometimes for reasons of taste,
sometimes for lack of money — did not eat vegetables in either
winter or summer. Occasionally a chicken is killed for Sundays. It
was difficult to get accounting of the items of food even of the day
before. A list was made of the foods of the current day. Gardens
were drying up and food was scarce, but such accounts as the fol¬
lowing were among the most common:

We get a 24-pound sack of flour and that will last us two weeks. These
boys won’t eat nothing but flour bread, if I don’t make ’em, so I buy a
peck of meal once in a while and make them eat some corn bread. Then I
buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of beans or cabbage sometimes and once

100

in a while a can of “ramatoes.” I eat oatmeal regularly. The boys don’t
like it, but I like it and when I can’t get milk, I just put sugar and water
on it and eat it.

An old couple at the dinner meal sat on the front porch eating
beans out of a rusty pan with their bread crumbled up in a bucket
top. The bread was of corn meal and had been cooked several
days. It was cold, as were the beans which they were eating. The
wife was drinking milk along with her portion. They were
slowly eating with their fingers. “We buy ’bout a peck of meal and
it costs 40 cents a peck. I buys a dime’s worth of sugar ’bout once
a week.” Other food habits were such as the following:

We country people have to eat rough food. They won’t even let us
have fertilizer. We ought to have oatmeal, grits, and things like that
to eat but we can’t get it.

The baby have to eat what we have and that ain’t much. I got one
old rooster. I wanted to kill him but I ain’t got no grease to cook him
wid.

No, I don’t eats chicken. I like ’em all right but I has to put ’em up
in a coop for two weeks ’fore I can get ’em clean enough. I can’t eat ’em
right out de yard.

If the rations give out ’fore Saturday we just don’t eat nothing ’till
Saturday evening. Mostly we use is white meat and bread and white
lard. I ain’t got no taste for it ’cause I was raised on plenty vegetables.
Sometimes we have peas. If it don’t rain these people ain’t going to have
nothing to eat.

I know how much groceries us buy every two week, but I ain’t never
stopped to figure it up. We always buys one bushel of meal, two pounds
of flour, and five pounds of meat. Sometimes rice and sugar and like dat.

In the hunting season they may shoot a squirrel, and in the
summer they fish. The families of larger means raise their own
meat and vegetables and can fruits.

We always had plenty meat, we kill our own meat, we’ll have good
meat this year. I reckon I’ll be able to put me up some berries if I can

get some rubbers and tops — first time I ever bought tops . You

know we don’t suffer in the meat line but our bread’s out.

IOI

My husband makes a plenty something to eat all the time . We

got fifteen cows here and I could run a dairy if I wanted to. We use about
three gallons of milk a day. We are crazy about milk. I really don’t like
corn bread ’cause it will give you the pellagacy. I just can’t enjoy corn
bread somehow or other. Don’t leave fresh meat out ’cause I love it.
With five of us here we can drink all the milk we get.

On the Saturday trips to town they may be seen sitting around
chatting and munching peanuts, bananas, and frankfurters and
drinking soda pop. These are a part of the excitement of the jour¬
ney but contribute little to the dietary deficiencies everywhere so
manifest. The Red Cross has provided yeast for many of the fami¬
lies, and this has been salutary where its purpose has been under¬
stood sufficiently to insure consistent use. The people die, and
with good reason.

102

Chapter Ill

ECONOMIC LIFE OF THE COMMUNITY

THE DIVISION OF LABOR

THE life of the area is agricultural, the staple and inevitable
crop is cotton, and the occupation of practically every mem¬
ber of the community old enough to work is farming. The whole
of life is bound up with the slow and tedious decadence of the plan¬
tation system which, in Phillips’ significant observation, formed
the industrial and social frame of government in the Black Belt
counties, while slavery provided merely the code of laws for the
perpetuation of the system.1

Without the structure of slavery and the resources of new lands,
it could not survive in health. Its greatest success carried with it
the fatal corollary of industrial stratification, the crushing-out of
yeomanry, a disastrous competition, and an unbalance of produc¬
tion which lead in the end to dependence. The attempts at adjust¬
ment of the system to new demands of agriculture have presented
the curious anomaly of these original values of the plantation in
conflict with powerful imperatives of the new agriculture. Modi¬
fications of the system into the share system with its tenant farm¬
ers and croppers lacks both the material and the social support of
the past, and while it tends to serve more the end of decentraliza¬
tion, peasant proprietorship, and independent farming, it serves
less its own and most unique advantages. The shell of the past
hangs on in the agricultural economy of the community under
study. It is present in the high proportion of Negro tenantry, the
almost exclusive concentration upon cotton, the crude unskilled

1 Ulrich B. Phillips, “The Decadence of the Plantation,” Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science , January, 1910.

labor in need of land and skilled supervision, the credit system and
advances, the tradition of dependence upon planters on the part of
the Negro tenants, and the tradition of dependence upon capital
on the part of the planters. It is in itself a transitional phase of
agriculture as the modes of life of the Negroes are a transitional
phase of the culture. The waste of the soil, the overproduction of
cotton, the constant involvement of the credit system, have
brought on an inevitable stagnation, both for planters and for the
Negroes whose lives are linked with its ever declining fortunes.

TABLE VIII

Status of White and Colored Farmers in 1925

Tenure

Color

White

Negro

Full owners .

248

277

Part owners .

Managers .

Total tenants .

294

2,258

a) Cash tenants .

J35

541

b ) Croppers .

655

c ) Other tenants .

io5

1,142

Total .

573

2>578

Any analysis of the present economic status of the Negroes in
this area must take into account the detailed division of the popu¬
lation into the customary and essential classes of cotton culture.
In 1925 there were 573 white and 2,578 colored farmers in Macon
County. Two hundred and forty-eight, or 43 per cent, of the white
farmers were full owners, while 277, or a little more than 10 per
cent, of the colored farmers owned their farms. Table IX gives
the status of both white and colored farmers in 1925.

Nine-tenths of the Negro farmers are tenants. The census has
distinguished three types of tenants: cash tenants, croppers, and
other tenants. In our group of 612 families it has been possible to
make finer distinctions in tenure found among the Negro farmers.

Sixty-four of the 612 families (slightly over 10 per cent), or about
the same proportion as found for the county as a whole, were own¬
ers of their farms. Landownership is, indeed, not so easily ac¬
quired. It means a break with the system and such meager
security as it holds. One farmer explained:

I got 186 acres of land. I pays instalments to the Macon County Bank.
I pay from $65 to $45 in taxes. Jest ’nough to kill folks. We rents out
about 25 acres. Last year I made three bales of cotton. We didn’t do

so much farming. I came out behind last year . When my father

died he left 460 acres and hit was a crowd of us chillun, and my brother —
the oldest — and my mother, they lak to run through wid ever’thing.

I been trying long back ter done paid this land off. .... My whole
debt is $900 and some off now. Ever’ year hit increases. They give you

sich a little discount . I had a drove of cows and the bank tuk them

too . I got nineteen chillun. Eight of them is dead; seven of them

was misfortunes.

TABLE IX

Distribution of 612 Negro Families in Macon
County According to Tenure

Owners .

. 64

Laborers:

Managers .

. 2

Farm .

. . 70

Tenants:

Other .

. . 18

Cash .

. 177

With relatives, etc., .

. . 22

Cotton .

. 1 32

Miscellaneous .

Croppers .

. 99

Unknown .

• • 7

Total .

. . 612

The

Owners

Present owners, for the most part, secured their lands a number
of years ago, when it was both cheaper and more fertile. Recently
there has been a season of bad crops. Their earnings are small, but
they keep themselves in food by cultivating patches, or raising
corn, peas, and potatoes in addition to their cotton. Ownership has
been consistently declining over several decades.

Few outstanding Negro farm-owners were encountered among
the families studied. Such as were recorded were persons of very
moderate personal accomplishments who were finding ownership

105

almost as onerous as tenantry. A fair average is suggested in a
family consisting of man and wife and five children, two of whom
were away, from whose experience a citation will be made. Their
home is a frame structure of five rooms. While the frame building
is badly in need of repair, it is evident there is some degree of
stability and ambition to achieve the status of a property-owner.
The family has lived in it for twenty-four years. It is inclosed by
a fence. The green window blinds and the lightning rods on the
roof can be seen from the road. Just in front of the house is a large
fruit orchard with pears, plums, peaches, and apples growing, and
in between are planted green vegetables. At the rear of the house
is a small cabin which might have been occupied by the former
owner’s servants. Said this farmer:

In 1902 I moved to C - ’s farm just across the way. I came here

from S - ’s place in Parell, Macon County. I had $500 when I first

came, with which I paid my rent and started to farm on 129 acres of
land. Times were good then and I made 40 bales of cotton the first year

and 36 the next. Paid Mr. - 6 bales the first year and 7 the next,

and sold the rest for 12 and 13 cents a pound. I then saved up enough
money to buy this place and paid $2,280 cash money for all this land,
129 acres. I planted the fruit trees myself. I wish very much my chil¬
dren would a stayed here. They didn’t know what hard times was. I
don’t know how much it’s valued for — you know when you say a big
amount then you hafter pay lots of taxes — so I just don’t say. When I
first came here I only paid $12 taxes, now they done gone up to $34. I
wish me and my wife didn’t have to worry about expenses, for pretty
soon we will be too old to work. Since I saved all the money in 1902 I
ain’t been able to raise that much cotton since, not even half that much.
For the last few years I only been able to raise one or two bales.

A detailed account of his earnings for the year, from all sources,
is as follows: In 1930 he raised 2 bales of cotton (900 lb.) and sold
them for 9 cents a pound, which brought him $81. In addition, he
raised 2 banks of potatoes, 200 loads of corn, 32 bushels of ground
peas, and 22 gallons of sorghum. All of this he used for his own
family and stock. There are three small houses on his farm; two
are rented and one is vacant. From one tenant he received $18 for
rent of a house and farm. From another he received 200 pounds of

106

A NEGRO-OWNER’S HOME

■

lint cotton, valued at $12. The fruit from the orchard is consumed
by the family. He raises a few hogs, chickens, and cows. The fami¬
ly eats the chickens and hogs, and he sells eggs for cash.

Another owner gave this account of himself:

Nigh as I come to it, we been here about 17 years. Times are harder
than den they ever been. Little corn, cotton, and cane standing in the
field, but it’s been now since 1927 that we had a decent crop. If it wasn’t
for the boll weevil, it was the drought, and if it wasn’t the drought it was
the flood. Got plenty stuff planted now in my garden, but it just drying
up because we need the rain. Yes, times harder with me than it is with
dem what ain’t got nothing, ’cause it is just as hard to figure how to keep
what I had. I hafter keep doing and looking, too. When we bought this
home, near twenty years ago, times were much better. Cost us $20 an
acre and the whole thing cost us $1,200. We paid half of it in cash.

Bought this land from Mr. - . During them times we raised as high

as $100 for our cow.

His income for 1930 was as follows: 3 bales of cotton (1,500 lb.)
for which he received $140, 2 banks of potatoes, and a quantity of
corn which he kept for his family. He sold chickens, eggs, and
hogs for extra money.

Below are given significant fragments from the experience of
other owners:

a) I farms fer myself. I made 7 bales of cotton last year. There’s
’bout 500 ter 550 pounds ter a bale. I raises peas ’sides cotton and corn,
and saves some of them fer hogs and some ter eat. I owns 80 acres my¬
self, and hit’s all paid for. I rents 5 acres and a patch ter that lady’s
husband. I hafter hire day laborers sometimes. I hired 4 laborers ter
help me chop cotton, and paid them 50 cents a day. Sometimes I hafter
get 5 and 6 ter help me pick. I paid 50 cents a hundred last year.

I made 7 bales. One ain’t sold. There was 525 pounds in each bale.
I got 9 cents a pound for the 6 bales I sold. I had my fertilizer and helpers
ter pay outa that. I still got that bale of cotton left. I made part of this
money ter buy this land ’fore I come here. I don’t know how much my
house worth, but I’d sell the horse and mules cheap, ’cause they ain’t
no good.

b ) I been owning this place about thirty years, and I been farming all
my days, but I just come over here ’bout six years ago. I ain’t go very
far in school. Just been right ’round here to these little local schools.
Didn’t get to go away to no high school. I never did carry the term out,

’cause I had to work. I reckon I been ’round here in this community
about fifty-two years. Been sick and ain’t able to do much work, but I
buys all I kin. I paid $3. 50 an acre for 75 J acres of land. I ain’t satisfied
with the house, but I ain’t in no shape to do no better. It’s just a shame,
an old hull, but I don’t seem to be able to make enough to do nothing.

The difficulty, as one of these owners explained it, of holding on to
what they have, is a very real one, and this fact is given support,
not only in the small number of owners, but in the number of
former owners who have lost their farms.

This place was to be mine but the man done closed me out. I had an
automobile and when he closed us out he told me to nail up the car out
there, let it stay there till he come back. When he come he tuk my mules,
cows, and ever’ thing. I made a mortgage on the place and he come and
take all my things. Take all my stock. I borrowed money from him.
The first time I got $20 and then for four or five months I got $ 20 each
month. Then I drawed $10 a month for ten months. Said I done paid
all back now, when he come back the last time, but he had been here
before and tuk all my corn and cotton. I done let him have a carload
of corn, ’bout 250 bushels, 6 bales of cotton, 600 pounds and over each.
Me and my boy give him another carload of corn. He got so he tuk every¬
thing I made for a while. Yes, he tuk two mules, a wagon, two cows, two
calves; taken my plows and that ended it with me, cause he had done
tuk the second time 5 bales of cotton, weighed 500 pounds each, and then
he had come again and tuk one bale, 500 pounds. Come back three years.
That was all I made and he tuk that. Said he satisfied when he got all

that. He come here last year and closed out John and - . He done

let us had some of the stock, and the mule he let us have was the same
mule returned back.

Twelve of the sixty-four owners rented land in addition to their
farms. In a few cases these farms which they owned were too small
to support a family. One of these families will be sufficient to il¬
lustrate the pressure of circumstances which forces such an exten¬
sion of the small ownership status into tenantry. The husband and
wife live in an attractive, well-kept house, which they own. They
own two acres of land and rent three more acres at two dollars per
acre for farm land. The man lost his arm while working in a cotton
gin about thirty years ago. He received no compensation, in spite
of the fact that there was a lawsuit. He estimated his last year’s

108

“I ASK

LANDLORD TO ’VANCE ME ER PAIR OF OVERALLS,

AN* HE SAY HE NEED OVERALLS HISSELF”

earnings at twenty-five dollars above his rent. Neither of them
has been to school, but the husband can read and write, and takes
a paper daily. The wife was divorced from her first husband, but
this is the husband’s first marriage. They have two daughters liv¬
ing in Macon County. One of them lives near and owns her home.
One daughter and one son live in Birmingham; one son in Ensly,
Alabama, and one son in Chicago.

In other cases the owners rented land and had tenants or labor¬
ers working for them. In the case of four of the owners they were
either buying their farms or there was a mortgage on them.

Tenants

The first distinction which should be made clear in regard to the
tenants is that between those who have made arrangements for
cash payments and those who have contracted to pay a stipulated
amount of cotton. There were 177 tenant heads of families who
had arranged to make cash payments, and 132 who paid rental in a
stipulated quantity of cotton. Usually these tenants paid forty or
fifty dollars for one-horse farms. The tenants seem to have no defi¬
nite idea concerning the actual number of acres in a one-horse
farm, but from the best available sources it seemed that a one-
horse farm was from fifteen to twenty acres in extent. Tenants who
pay their rental usually give a bale and a half for a one-horse farm.
Here, again, the arrangement varies according to custom, or the
terms of the landlord. The tenant may pay rent in cash, or in cotton
and other produce; he may or may not receive advances from the
landlord in the form of cash or rations. A renter may subrent. Again,
he may apply for a government loan or borrow from the bank.

«) We pay 400 pounds of lint cotton. We made nearly 6 bales last
year and he sold it hisself, but we still owe ’bout $50. We ain’t got no
advance, but we borrows from the bank. I think we pay 10 cents on the
dollar. We sold cotton for 9 cents last year. We could a got 10 but just

kept holding it. Old man J - [landlord] won’t do a thing. He come by

here five years ago and said he was going to fix this house up. All he’s
give us since then is a few planks to fix the porch. It’s rotting down.
We’re just living outdoors. We rents out our ox for $12 a year, and the
folks feed him.

b) I ain’t got no children and me and my husband works a one-horse
farm and we got ’bout thirty acres. Last year we made 6 bales of cotton
and rented the thirty acres for $60; fifteen acres we used for cotton, the
rest for corn. We kept the corn and didn’t sell none hardly. At ten cents
a pound the six bales would bring $300. We has $10 advanced for four
months. We turned it all over, and they took out the $40 advanced, $30
for fertilizer, and $60 rent. We got through and then they say we come
out $72.43 in the hole.

c ) Tenant received no advance, but paid 400 pounds of cotton as rent.
He raised 2 bales of cotton [around 800 lb.], sold the other, and received
10 cents a pound [$40]. He also grew 3 bushels of potatoes, 16 rows of
sugar cane, and 4 loads of corn.

d) Tenant received no advances. He raised 2J bales of cotton and
paid 1 bale for rent. He cleared $25 on the sale of if bales. He also
raised I2f bushels of corn, 1 bank of potatoes, and 6 gallons of syrup.

In more prosperous times when there is a reasonable assurance
of returns, the landowners made advances both to tenants and to
share-croppers. It is a most frequent complaint of the tenants now

that they cannot get advances. One said: “I ask Mr. - to

Vance me jest nuff for a pair of overalls. He tell me he needs over¬
alls hisself.” In other cases advances to tenants have merely been
reduced.

Last year I drawed $10 to the plow [meaning $10 a month for from four
to six months for each 20 acres cultivated] but I ain’t getting but $7 this
year. I rents the whole place [400 acres] and then subrents it, and pays
4 bales of cotton for rent. But I don’t never make nothing offen it.
Didn’t clear nothing last year. I paid out $200 last year. Interest steps
on me time I pay my rent [for money borrowed from the bank] and inter¬
est cost 15 cents on the dollar. I haven’t made nothing since 1927. I
clears $210 then and ain’t cleared nothing since. I got 21 cents for cotton
that year.

Another explained:

They don’t give nothing now. Use to ’low us $10 provisions a month,
but dey done cut us way down. The white folks say some of these banks
done fell in; dere ain’t no money to be got. That’s all. Said this is the
suppression time.

Another type of tenant pays a good rental in cash and receives ad¬
vances.

1 10

We farms 60 acres and pays $150 for rent. That’s $75 to the plow.
They Vances us $15 a month for five months. I come out jest £175 in the
hole.

We run a two-horse farm. We was due to pay $150 rent last year,
but I don’t know what us is paying this year. We cut down on the land
we was using. We made 22 bales of cotton last year, and it was selling at
8, 9, and 10 cents when we turned it in to the man. We didn’t git nothing
back. You see, the man had been carrying us for two years. I took
’sponsibility for the whole patch and let some of it out to three other
parties, and stood for them. Besides the cotton the men took 13 loads
of corn, but I saved about 200 bushels for myself to live on, and I sold
some peanuts and corn.

The normal earnings of a man and wife, if both work as tenants
on a one-horse cotton farm, would probably average $260 a year
in cash value. However, they pay about half of their cotton in
rent, use the corn for their stock, and eat the potatoes, peas, and
sorghum which they grow along with the cotton. As a result very
little cash is handled. They manage to live on the advances, or by
borrowing for food and clothing and permitting their crop to be
taken in satisfaction of the debt. It becomes very largely a paper
loss or gain. In the case of loss the tenant may move away, leaving
his debt. In the latter case he may be conscious of having earned
more than he got, or of paying for some other Negro tenant’s
default.

We got right ’round sixty acres and one-half of it is in cotton. We
working on halves. We got a two-horse farm. My daughter got one and

I got one. I farmed with Mr. P - last year. We had thirty acres over

there and made 5 bales of cotton and paid $100 for rent. We gits $2 a
month in cash and $10 in rations. We came out $ 200 in the hole last
year. I don't have to pay that off ' cause I let that went when I come here
[he had to give up farm tools, etc.]. I been farming all my life ’cept two

years when we went to Virginia . I worked in the coke field out

there. That was the year the war was.

One daughter lived at home. Four boys were away living in cities
in Alabama. One grown daughter lived in the county and worked
with them. One grown son was dead — “got knocked in the head”
seven little children had died between the ages of two and four.

1 1 1

Share-Croppers

There is another type of farmer, the share-cropper, who, without
tools or any form of capital, farms on the condition that he give
the landlord one-half of the crop. There were ninety-eight families
working on this arrangement besides one woman who gave a fourth
of the crop for the rental of her small farm. The arrangement
varies with the landlord and the condition of the tenant. When
the tenant is furnished tools and work animals in addition to the
land, he may get only a third of the cotton raised. Most common¬
ly, however, it is halves, and he may find it necessary to rent a
mule for his plowing.

The share-croppers frequently are subtenants for small white
and Negro tenant farmers, or for their relatives. It is at least a
means of beginning, and a good share-cropper can, with good for¬
tune, place himself in position to undertake the responsibilities of
a full tenant later.

I works a one-horse farm on halves. I get ’bout $12 a month in ra¬
tions. Last year [1930] I worked for the Tallahassee Mill Company, and
made $9.75 a week. My wife was working by the day for 50 cents a day.
We been married ’bout four years now. I moved here from Tallahassee
’cause I was lacking for sense. The white folks liked me down there and
everything, and I moved. I called myself liking ter farm best.

Farm Laborers

Seventy heads of families were farm laborers who worked on
other people’s farms for a stipulated wage. Eleven of these farm
laborers had small patches of their own which they were permitted
to cultivate rent free. The wage usually paid these laborers was
50-65 cents a day, the women receiving more often 40 cents. The
following statement of a farm laborer indicates the conditions un¬
der which this class works.

We jest work by the day and pay $1.50 a month for this house. It’s
jest a piece of house. I gits 50 cents a day and my husband and the boy
gits 65 cents each. We have to feed ourselves and pay rent out of that.
My husband is pretty scheming, but sometimes he can’t git nothing to
do. I don’t know how much time we lose, but he works most of the time.

1 1 2

Course the boy stops and goes to school in the winter sometimes, but if
he can git work to do, he works too.

The husband lives with his wife and her sixteen-year-old illegiti¬
mate boy. The boy was caught with whiskey on him and stayed in
jail a month before his aunt could bail him out. He is only in the
third grade in school, and his mother gives this as the reason for
his retardation. He had to work out the $105 bail which his aunt
paid.

Among these families there were also laborers who were working
on railroads, logging, and on county roads. There were eighteen
of these laborers, including seven whose wives managed a small
farm or a patch as a means of contributing to the family support.
The wife of one of these laborers related the following history:

My husband and me married eight years. He works at the Hardaway
log mill and makes $7.00 a week. He been working there four years now
. . . . We don’t have to pay no rent. The man he works for pays for hit.

I don’t do nothing but stay home . My husband was in debt when

we left Milstead but he ain’t much in debt now. He don’t owe but ’bout
a dollar or two. He don’t lack this man he’s working for ’cause he don’t

pay him but $1.10 a day. The man’s name is Mr. S - and he is mean

to work for. He got 14 or 15 working for him down there at the log mill
’sides my husband. If we git hard up and want some money, he don’t

help us. He don’t do nothing but run you away from there . My

husband goes ter work wid sunrise every morning and works till dark.
I git up fo’ day and cooks his breakfast. He don’t come back home ter
dinner cause hit’s so far. Hit’s ’bout seven miles from here.”

Casuals

Probably the lowest class of farm laborers was made up of the
four farm hands who did not receive a stipulated monetary wage,
but were to get what was known as a “hand’s share.” This, seem¬
ingly, just amounts to enough to keep them living. One old woman
who lives by herself in a one-room shack and works for a hand’s
share told the following story:

I works for a hand’s share in the crop with the folks cross dere. My
husband been dead. I ain’t never had but one child and dat’s de son
what’s right down dere . I been up north in Birmingham with my

• • • •

sister .... but I come back here, ’cause dese chillun kept worrying me
to come on here to live wid them. It’s mighty tight on me to have to go
working in dese fields half starved, and I ain’t had a bit of money to buy
a piece of cloth as big as my hand since I been back. I washed fer white
people in Birmingham, and dey was good to me. I am jest gitting long
by the hardest. I works for dese people for a hand’s share in the crop.
Dey gives me a load of corn and a load of potatoes. I gits some of all the
other stuff what’s made, and when selling cotton dey give you a little
money out of the seed. I don’t see no money on time. Dey gives me a
little something to eat ’cause I works wid dem and dey gives me a little
groceries. I never was in this fix before in my life. I had good money
when I come from Birmingham. I had two fives and five single dollahs.
I sho’ gonna git what I works for dis year.

Eight women who were heads of families were employed in do¬
mestic service, and one of these women had a small patch which
she cultivated. There were twenty-two persons, some of them very
old, in other cases dependent relatives and in a few cases chil¬
dren, who were living on their parents’ or relatives’ farms, with¬
out being required to pay any rent. Two very old couples were
living in this manner on white men’s places, where they were
permitted to sustain themselves on small plots of ground without
having to pay rent. One old couple, now too old for much work,
had been given a place by a white landlord. The man said, rather
wearily:

I jest got a little patch, ’bout an acre. The people plows it for me, and
I works it. I could work more [land] but I jest ain’t able to plow it. He
lets me have what I make. I don’t raise no cotton, jest corn. You see I
got hogs and I have to feed ’em and we have to have bread. When the
corn gives out I works ’bout by the day, and git meal that way.

I used to be doing well; I used to rent a great big farm and rent it out.
I had lots of stock. Oh, they died. I had to git rid of some. I had plows,
hands, and everything. Oh, they ruint me, jest making one bale when
they coulda made five, and me standing fer it. It jest broke me.

The old man is eighty-four years old and has been married twice.
His wife is seventy-two years old. A white landowner allows them
to live in the house and work the patch free. This white man and
his wife often bring food to the old couple.

Other Occupations

Among these 612 families there were 7 from whom it was impos¬
sible to learn the conditions on which they farmed. In one case,
for example, a woman knew that last year she had farmed on
halves but did not know what the arrangements would be for the
present year. In two other cases the white landlord had been sick
and there had been no opportunity to make arrangements. There
were also persons in this group of families drawn from many differ¬
ent occupations. There were two pensioners, a midwife, a mechan¬
ic, a preacher, a teacher — who lived in the “teacherage” — a chauf¬
feur, two managers or overseers of a large plantation, and a boot¬
legger whose wife was a cash tenant.

TABLE X

Occupations of Women in 612 Families
in Macon County

Occupation

No.

Occupation No.

Unknown .

Business .

Dead or away .

Domestic service .

None .

Housewife and mother .

Professional (nurse,

Farmer-housekeeper. . .

470

teacher, etc.) .

Farmer-laborer .

Midwife .

Total .

612

Women Workers

Nearly all of the women in these families assist on the farm.
Only 31 of the 579 women who were heads of families devoted
themselves exclusively to the work of housewife and mother. Thir¬
ty-two of them worked as day laborers on the farms. Four hun¬
dred and seventy of them, or 81.1 per cent, combined the duties of
farming and housekeeping. In some cases the wife’s farming ac¬
tivities are confined to cultivating gardens. These gardens are nec¬
essary to supplement the efforts of these farmers in making a liv¬
ing. The type of garden a farmer has determines the kind of food
he eats and the extent, very often, of his dependence on the land¬
lord. Five hundred and thirteen of these 612 families had a garden.

1 !5

Not only does the wife engage in work on the farm, but the chil¬
dren and other members of the household also work. In 252 fami¬
lies, or 41. 1 per cent of the total, there were two persons working;
and in 67 families, or 10 per cent, there were four persons at work.
In 89 families, or 14.5 per cent, there were from five to nine per¬
sons at work.

TABLE XI

Distribution of 612 Families in Macon County
According to Numbers Working

No.

Unknown .

. 3

Six .

. 17

None .

. 4

Seven .

. 17

One .

. 94

Eight .

. IO

Two .

. 252

Nine .

. I

Three .

. 103

—

Four .

. 67

Total .

. 6l2

Five .

. 44

Child Workers

In many cases the arrangement between the landlord and the
tenant or cropper includes the work of the children on the farm.
In about 20 per cent of the 612 families all of the children were
employed. But noticeable differences appear for the three types of
families classified according to the education of the mother. Of the
64 families with children in which the wife was illiterate, 47, or
about 74 per cent, of them had children employed. Of the 140
families with children and in which the wife had a fourth-grade
education or less, 101, or about 72 per cent, had children employed.
The significant difference appears in the next type of families, in
which the wife had a fifth-grade education or more. Of these 169
families 103, or about 61 per cent, had children employed. A bet¬
ter basis of comparison of the employment of children in these
three types of families is obtained by calculating the actual per¬
centage of children in these three types of families who are at work.
Ninety-three, or 56.3 per cent, of the 165 children in the first type
of families were at work. In the second type of families, 230, or

1 16

5 1. 1 per cent, of the 450 children were at work. In the third and
highest type of families there were 235, or 41.8 per cent, of the 562
children employed.

There is great mobility among the tenants and share-croppers
especially. In the group of 612 families there were 340, or 55.5 per
cent, that had changed residence during the last five years. Many
of these 340 families had moved several times during the five years.

TABLE XII

Number of Families with Specified Number of Children Employed

Education of
Mother

Un¬

known

None

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Total

Dead or away

Unknown. . . .

Illiterate .

1 13

Four years or
less .

189

Five years or
more .

122

225

Total. . . .

321

115

612

They give various reasons for moving, such as “jest got tired of
livin’ down there,” or they heard the soil was better in the present
location, or in one case they wanted to move from the place be¬
cause they say so many of the family die. One tenant gave rather
specific reasons for moving. He said:

I moved here ’cause I jest didn’t like Jim - and got tired of it.

We made 10 bales last year but look like we poorer than ever. We didn’t
get but $12 Vancement for five months from that cotton; course we owed
him some from the year before. I don’t know ’zactly how much it was
he [former landlord] got for the cotton; but he tole me he got ten, seven,
eight, nine cents for some of it. He was a fellow who wouldn’t let you
know his business and course you couldn’t do a thing but take his word
for it. He got all new people this year. All of them is pretty much from
new communities. About six or seven families moved out, and I believe
about twice that many moved in. He had to go over to Warriorstand to
get the people ’cause nobody in this part would move in; so he got some
new folks that didn’t know him.

His first wife and her first husband are dead. They had one child
to die from “thrash” at the age of nine months. His two children
by his first wife live with his mother in Birmingham. They have
one child by the second marriage.

Ownership of JVork Animals and Farm Implements

The total number of work animals owned by the 612 families
was 237. These were distributed as shown in Table XIV.

In the absence of motor-driven machinery there can be no cotton
without these work animals for plowing, at least. Thus it comes
to be that a farmer’s mule is as essential to his ability to sustain

TABLE XIII
Work Animals Owned

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Total

Horses .

Mules .

II9

184

Oxen .

Total....

163

237

himself and his family as land. But ownership of animals carries
with it the obligation to feed them through the long period between
seasons, and food, throughout the year, is difficult for the farmer
to secure for his family. “My husband was groaning all night in
his sleep. Say, ‘Lord, that po’ mule ain’t had nothing to eat and I
ain’t got nothing to feed him.’ He up this morning early, say he
going to find something to do to get something to eat for dat
mule.”

For those who cannot own a mule or horse, it is possible to rent
one. The cost varies from $1 5 to $25. Some landlords furnish work
animals and make an adjustment on the crop. Between the Negro
farmers there is a practice of exchanging services. The owner of an
animal will plow for a person who does not own one, and in turn
get his services in hoeing. The farm machinery and tools owned by
these families were almost without exception the simple imple-

1 18

MAN AND MULE

“DIS OLE MULE LAK’ ME— HE AIN’T MUCH GOOD NO MORE

ments the type of which has been in service in the area for fifty or
sixty years. As simple as these were, there were 299 families, or
nearly half of them, who owned no farming implements at all.
Table XV lists such as could be found. This table gives all of the
tools actually owned by families. It is usually assumed that every
farmer has a hoe and most of them a plow. This is not the case

TABLE XIV
Farm Implements Owned

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Elev¬

Twelve

Total

Cotton planters. . . .
Cultivators .

1 1

1 HH

Fertilizers .

Hoes .

* 4

142

Mowing machines. .
Pitchforks .

Rakes .

Scrapes .

Scudderstocks .

Shovels .

Singletrees .

Slanter .

Stalk-cutters .

114

Sweeps .

102

122

273

Turnplows .

Wagons .

Total .

3°9

221

666

with these tenants. It is expected that these tools will be provided
with the land. The heavier farm implements are owned almost ex¬
clusively by the independent Negro farmers.

THE PRESSURE OF THE SYSTEM

When an owner or a tenant has borrowed cash or rations from
the landlord or the bank and his crop fails, he risks losing a portion
or all of his collateral, whether in crop, stock, tools, or anything
usable. When everything is taken, he refers to himself as being
“closed out.” This is about as serious a misfortune as can occur to

11 9

one who lives by the soil, and closing out a Negro tenant is not
always a pleasant proceeding for the white landlord who has had
dealings with these tenants. Sometimes they extend the credit.
Sometimes they are forced by pressure against themselves to bear
down upon the Negroes. Sometimes it is an impersonal procedure
in which they are not aware of the suffering inflicted. When there
is absentee ownership the blow descends swiftly and impersonally.
But the bitterest complaints are against the cold process which re¬
lieves these tenants and small owners of their possessions because
it can be done without fear of successful protest.

I made 5 bales of cotton and was due to pay if bales for rent but they
took it all. We all ’vanced from this same woman and they had taken
her place and taken what the folks on this place that she had Vanced
made too. They took the place, debt and all. She had Vanced us [his family]
$75. Not a bit [in answer to a question as to whether they gave him any¬
thing back when they sold his cotton]. They jest took it all and went
ahead. They took all the cotton and corn too and they took the mules,
plows, and everything else. I made ’bout a hundred bushels of corn. I

was buying one of the mules and renting the other from Mrs. S - , but

they took both of them.

Unjust Settlements

It is, of course, impossible to determine the extent of exploita¬
tion of these Negro farmers, so long as the books are kept by the
landlord, the sale price of cotton known only by him, and the cost
and interest on rations advanced in his hands. In the case of many
new tenants, however, who could have no standing indebtedness,
their “suspicions” of being paid short were warranted. Said one
tenant, “White folks take it when they git ready and you looking
right at them.”

We had 60 acres last year and paid $200 for rent and made 13 bales of
cotton and turned hit all over. [This should have netted $400 at 10
cents.] The thing about hit, we ain’t had no settlement. All we got last
year was $51 in trade, they claimed. I ain’t nothing like satisfied. I was
settin’ there at dinner looking at the house and the condition. I was
settin’ under that tree there last night studyin’ ’bout the same thing.
Me and my wife ain’t had a string of nothing ter wear in two years.

120

"DIS OLE FENCE NEED FININ’ TOO”

Singleton Thompson’s family, which included two married sons
and their families, was renting from a woman planter. She sold
them two mules, a wagon, and two plows, which were to be paid
for in instalments. The first year they raised io bales of cotton,
some corn, and hay for the mules. When the time for settlement
came the woman took the io bales of cotton and presented a bill
for $623.25, which they could not pay. She then took the mules
and wagon, the hay, and 37 bushels of corn. The Thompsons
moved and tried it again on another plantation.

The Adams family rented 37 acres and agreed to pay $100
rental. They raised, by exact count, 4 bales of cotton, 100 bushels
of corn, 23 gallons of syrup, 300 pounds of pork, 25 bushels of peas.
They had received $50 in allowances, and had been buying a mule
for two years, the total cost of which was $115. The owner of the
land took all the cotton and corn, and in addition the mule and
their wagon, and informed them that they still owed $53. They
asked for a “bill that said how for each thing.” The owner refused
to send this but instead became angry and informed them that
they were $308.98 in the hole. The tenant said, “When you work¬
ing on a white man’s place you have to do what he says, or treat,
trade, or travel. He jest closed out and got all we had.”

Undoubtedly, the appearance of success, together with an un¬
certain appreciation of his proper social status, may provide an¬
noyances which take on serious nature and in the end deprive the
too successful Negro of his holdings. The story of one such ex¬
perience is given in some detail because of its picturing of a combi¬
nation of several elusive though not uncommon factors.

We all in the same condition here. This man call themselves giving

us $6.00 to the plow but we hardly ever git it . My people made 43

bales of cotton last year and they didn’t git a biscuit for Christmas morn¬
ing. It ain’t been a month this year what we ain’t been hungry. I bought
a little place and owed $500 more on it, and had two more years to finish

paying for it. It cost me $1,350 . They give me six months in jail

for cutting two cords of wood closer to the line than I oughta been.

A man come down there where I was cutting and said, “Well, L - ,

what you doing, cutting wood?” and I told him yes, that I had to do fust one
thing then another to help out. Then he told me to come walk down the

1 2 1

swamp and show him where I been cutting, and I carried him down there
and then he said, “You closer to the line then you ought to be, ain’t you ?”
I told him that I bought that place and if I was close to the line I didn’t

know it, and if I was off I didn’t know it. He said that B - A -

[colored] said that I was cutting on somebody else’s place. I asked him

why didn’t A - come and tell me instead of going all the way to Tus-

kegee to tell somebody I was cutting 15 yards closer on the other man’s
place. I had two cords of wood cut. He said, “I tell you what to do;
you take this wood and sell it and take the money to the bank on
Saturday to Tuskegee.”

I went on home, and in jest about a hour the man come up to my
house, and I was shucking corn, and he said, “What did I tell you when
I was here a while ago?” I told him what he said and told him that’s
what I was going to do. He said, “Would you mind walking out to the
road with me?” I went out there with him and the sheriff was there and
said, “Hello, old boy, still working hard? Get up in the car, I want to

talk to you a while. L - , old boy, I been knowing you all my life,

nearly, but did you know I got a warrant in my pocket for you?” I said,
“What for?” and he said for cutting timber closer to the line without a
permit. This other white man was standing there, and I said, I thought
we had straightened that out as that man had told me to sell it to the
Macon County Bank. The sheriff asked me why he was having me
arrested if he told me that and he said, “Well, the land didn’t b’long to
him.” Well, I said, “I haven’t had any dinner yet and will you go by
home with me?” He said he would go and wait for me to eat. When I
got ready I asked my wife to give me 15 cents to get me some tobacco,
but he told me not to bother with that cause he would buy me some.

He carried me on to Tuskegee and I saw that they was gonna lock me
up, and I told them it wasn’t no need for them to lock me up that I
could make bond for cutting that little wood. He said, “Tell you the
truth, people said we couldn’t put you in jail, so you can sign up bond
tomorrow.” Well, the next morning I told them I was ready to sign up
that bond and he said “I’m ’fraid they done run you bond up so high you
can’t make bond. It’s $2,000.” I said, “Man, I ain’t killed nobody, how
could you do that?” I could stand $1,000 but they kept me on in jail,
calling themselves getting more than one case ’gainst me. I stayed in

jail two months and they put my brother E - in jail and J - F - .

Mr. W - pulled my people out here by fooling them. He made them

move off my place over here, and told them he was going to get me out of
it. When the little case came up it was put off till May and then June and

then July. They come in one day and said, “E - , did you know we

was fixing to send you up to the penitentiary?” We went up to the

122

courthouse and called the case against E - R - , L - R - , and

J - F - , and the judge said, “We going to give all you boys six

months in jail.” I got up and said, “Look here, Judge, will you ’low me
to speak this one word?” He granted it. “Before you send me off, I want

to ask you not to send E - and J - off ’cause they ain’t guilty of

nothing. Just give me ninety days of hard labor.” They let E - and

J - off. I went off and now I’m back to that tale-telling man what

said he was going to help me.

When I got back, he said, “E - , you are looking mighty well. I

didn’t want you to go to the penitentiary.” I said, “That’s right, I’m
back all right, and I come to see after my people, and get all straight and
settle up with you and see about the cotton they made last year.” Then
he begins to start talking ’bout another crop and told me he had pooled
all the cotton and couldn’t sell it right then, but for me to go ahead and
start another crop and he would pay my people. I was big-enough fool
to believe he would be a man of his word, and I started another crop.
I told him if he would settle with them for io cents a pound we would be
satisfied, but he said he just couldn’t get to it right now. He said that
he believed we could make money this year, and we would settle this
fall .

If you move to a place and find out you at the wrong place the best
thing to do is to move, ain’t it? These people been making enough cotton
here to be double millionaries. There is one man over yonder who made
25 bales last year, and you know what he got out of that cotton? One
ten-dollar suit; that is all he got after working all the year and making
the white man 25 bales of cotton, and when they give you a suit they think
you have made a lot.

The matter of government loans has offered opportunities for
profit, in which some of the Negro farmers have failed to share,
although they understood these loans to have been made in part
on the basis of their tenantry and application.

I don’t believe the white folks are doing right by these farms. We have
no water, the place is in a bad condition, and we was supposed to get a
federal loan. He had all the men come up to his house and sign for it, and
said he would waive the rent ’cause he couldn’t get it ’less he waived the
rent. He signed for all the tenants and got J 1,600, but he kept the money
and made us pay the rent and all the loans we owed him, too. On top of
that, he issued groceries for just 5 months last year and after that he
give some $6.00 and some $7.00, and some $10. This year he just give
some of them a few groceries and he’s still holding to that money.

123

Cash Earnings of Negro Farmers

Few of these families handle any cash money. They get their
food and a few clothes from the commissary or store, where ad¬
vances are made. Two hundred and thirty-seven of the tenants
and croppers received no advances. There were 67 tenants re¬
ceiving advances in cash only; 39 were receiving advances in pro¬
visions only; and 21 were receiving advances in cash and provi¬
sions. These advances are mainly for food, but sometimes the
farmer manages to get a few necessary clothes for his family.
These are usually secured at the time they make settlement, or
when settlements are not made they turn in their cotton in the fall.

An attempt was made to draw together the varied arrangements
with landlords on which the tenants work, to estimate the yearly
money earnings and the amount of cash handled. A very large
number of these heads of families did not know how much they
had earned and how much they had netted above current expenses
for food and clothing, usually in the form of advances.

Twenty-six per cent of all the heads of families went into debt,
four of these for more than $500; 61.7 per cent emerged without
gain or loss — “broke even”; and 9.4 per cent registered profits.
Fifty-six per cent of all the families had a gross annual income of
less than $100. This, however, does not include varying amounts
of food raised in their gardens and consumed by the families. This
served principally for the summer and early fall and consisted of
corn, potatoes, peas, and sorghum.

A measure of refinement is brought to the figures on income by
sources of income. The largest group, 237, is that of tenants re¬
ceiving no advances. Seventy per cent of these were receiving less
than $100 per year in money. Fifteen, however, had gross incomes
of more than $500. Fifty-seven per cent of those who rented homes
received less than $100 and of the home-owners 69 per cent earned
less than $100. At this period at least, home-ownership is no guar¬
anty of greater earnings. The actual cash handled by the majority
of families is between $70 and $90, normally in the form of ad¬
vances, or loans out of which comes payment for a portion of the

124

food; for clothing; for health; for education of the children; for
church, lodge, and insurance dues; and for some amusement.

Branson and Dickey found in two Chatham County townships in
North Carolina that black renters and croppers held property val¬
ued at about $305 per family, and the white renters and croppers
$415 per family. The average property owned and cash per family
handled during the year for each economic class was as shown in
Table XVI.

TABLE XV*

Average Property Owned and Cash per Family Handled
DURING THE YEAR FOR EACH ECONOMIC CLASS

Economic Classes

Property

Owned

Owned per
Family

Total Cash
Income

Cash per
Family

135 white owners .

$624,642

24,627

$ 84,553

$626

41 black owners .

93,856

2,407

21 ,708

597

38 white renters .

:9>999

526

9,525

251

18 white croppers .

3, 2 79

426

1 ,993

153

66 black renters .

27,016

4OO

I9,°53

289

36 black croppers .

4,n3

123

2,777

l91

329 farmers .

$772,9°5

$2,349

$139,609

$424

* R. C. Branson, “Farm Tenancy in the Cotton Belt: How Farm Tenants Live,” Journal of Social Forces ,
March, 1922.

That this is a more prosperous area with greater likelihood of
Negroes acquiring ownership of property is evident in the fact
that a fourth instead of a tenth of the Negro farmers are owners
and they own three-fourths of all the Negro property.

David R. Coker, of Hartsville, South Carolina, estimated the
average cash income on the cotton farms of the South at $600.
This includes owners and tenants, whites and Negroes. Moreover,
this is all gross income. The net is impossible to secure because of
the lack of bookkeeping records of the various expenditures, and
cost-accounting of any sort for general farm work. That the net is
small, however, is evident in the extreme smallness of the gross.

The Dreary Cycle of Life

The weight of generations of habit holds the Negro tenant to his
rut. Change is difficult, even in the face of the increasing struggle

I25

for survival under the old modes. One intelligent old farmer had
sensed an important element of the natural conservation of these
tenants. He said:

Farming is like gambling. If I get out I ought to get back and work a
smaller farm next year. But you take an old farmer and if he ever gets
out the hole with a good-size farm, instead of cutting down he’ll get him
another mule and take on some more. That’s what keeps us down.

Such philosophy is for the man who retains some hope for improve¬
ment. The most dismal aspect of this situation is the air of resig¬
nation everywhere apparent.

If it wasn’t the boll weevil it was the drought; if it wasn’t the drought
it was the rains.

One thing, we ain’t got proper tools we ought to have. If you git any
good land you have to buy things to make it good, and that takes lots of
money, and if we had money to buy these things we wouldn’t be so hard
up.

What kills us here is that we jest can’t make it cause they pay us
nothing for what we give them, and they charge us double price when
they sell it back to us.

Year after year of this experience for many of them and the hope¬
lessness crystallizes itself at times into despair. “Ain’t make noth¬
ing, don’t speck nothing no more till I die. Eleven bales of cotton
and man take it all. We jest work for de other man. He git every¬
thing.” Mysticism and religion come to the rescue of some who
add to hopelessness a fear of the future. “I axed Jesus to let me
plant a little more. Every time I plant anything I say, ‘Jesus, I
ain’t planting this for myself; I’m planting this for you to in-
crease.

It is evident that all is not exploitation. The high level of illiter¬
acy at times fuses its weight with a diffidence and ignorance which
not only invite exploitation but make misunderstandings inevita¬
ble. Some families did not know the acreage they were working;
the work to be done; the terms under which they accepted the
land; the weight of their cotton yield. They were just working; if
they came out they would spend the money from the very novelty

126

of having it; if they stayed in the hole, it was only what they ex¬
pected. “We always owe money and going to owe it, too; jest one
month after another always something. That’s the way it goes.’’

The plantation in theory was a capital investment for large-scale
production under a continuing routine. Its purpose was not the
encouragement of peasant proprietorship. The social relations, la¬
bor, mentality, and discipline fostered by it are at the same time
reflected in its surviving forms and traditions, and in the continu¬
ing selection and molding of its tenant types. It demands an un¬
questioning obedience to its managerial intelligence; it demands
the right to dictate and control every stage of cultivation; it cannot
and does not tolerate a suggestion of independent status. Those
Negro tenants who have in spirit revolted against its implication,
or who have with praiseworthy intent sought to detach themselves
from its grip by attaining an independent status, have felt the full
force of its remaining strength. Nothing remains but to succumb
or to migrate.

I am working myself to death, mighty near; been working mighty
hard. I am trying to get straight. I made a bale and a half last year,
but never got nothing out of it. I stayed in that little house over there
and paid $60 and never got nothing last year, I worked and dug and
never got a thing, and when I told him I wasn’t making nothing he said,
“Well, you are making money for me, ain’t you?” And I said, “Well, I
can quit.” I moved from there, and he didn’t know it. Folks went up
there looking for Dick Richards and Dick Richards done moved.

Henry Robinson had been living in the same place for nineteen
years, paying $105 a year rent for his land. He raises three bales
of cotton a year, turns it all over, and continues to go deeper in
debt. He said:

I know we been beat out of money direct and indirect. You see, they
got a chance to do it all right, ’cause they can overcharge us and I know
it being done. I made three bales again last year. He said I owed $400 at
the beginning of the year. Now you can’t dispute his word. When I
said “Suh?” he said “Don’t you dispute my word; the book says so.”
When the book says so and so you better pay it, too, or they will say
“So, I’m a liar, eh?” You better take to the bushes too if you dispute
him, for he will string you up for that.

127

I don’t want them to hurt my feelings and I just have to take what
they say, ’cause I don’t want to go to the mines [convict labor] and I do
want to live.

Another man complained:

I tried keeping books one year, and the man kept worrying me about
it, saying his books was the ones he went by anyhow. And nothing you
can do but leave. He said he didn’t have no time to fool with no books.
He don’t ever give us no rent notes all the time. They got you ’cause
you have to carry your cotton to his mill to gin and you better not carry
your cotton nowhere else. I don’t care how good your cotton is, a colored
man’s cotton is always second- or third-grade cotton if a colored man
sells it. The only way you can get first prices for it is to get some white
man to sell it for you in his name. A white man sold mine once, and got
market price for it.

We haven’t paid out to Mr. - in twelve years. Been in debt that

long. See, when a fella’s got a gun in your face you gotter take low or die.

To the Negro tenant the white landlord is the system; to the
white landlord the capital of the banks is the system. The land¬
lord needs credit by which to advance credit to the tenants. The
security of the landlord is in the mortgages on his land; the secu¬
rity of the tenant is the mortgage on the crops which he will raise.
Because cotton lends itself best to this arrangement, cotton is over¬
produced and debts descend to obscure still another year of labor,
and the vicious circle continues. In the desperate struggle both
may lose, but the advantage is always with the white landlord.
He dictates the terms and keeps the books. The demands of the
system determine the social and economic relations, the weight of
which falls heaviest upon those lowest down. There was a song
which old women hummed as they hacked the earth with their
hoes. The words were almost always indistinct but the mood of
the tune, dreary and listless, fitted as naturally to the movement
of their bodies as it did to the slick and swish of the earth under
the blows of their hoes. One verse only was remembered by one
of them, and it ran so:

Trouble comes, trouble goes.

I done had my share of woes.

Times get better by ’n’ by,

But then my time will come to die.

128

Chapter IV

THE SCHOOL AND THE PEOPLE

EDUCATION OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN

"IT ITERACY is not an asset in the plantation economy, and it
JLy was not only discouraged but usually forbidden. The belief
that education spoiled the slave carried over with but little modi¬
fication for many years into the belief that education spoils a field
hand. The oldest members of the community are illiterate, and in
those working relations which reveal least change from the past
this lack has proved no important handicap. Reading and figuring
carry elements of danger to established relations. Since the de¬
tailed direction of planting and the handling of accounts are the
sphere of the planter, theoretically it is he who can profit most
from the technique of literacy. Too much attention to reading
about the outside, and particularly to figuring, on the part of
Negro tenants, would surely make them less satisfied with their
status and bring them into harsh conflict with the system. The
need of enough education to read and figure arises largely among
those families desirous of escaping from the dependent relationship
under the old plantation system.

If figures can make the situation within this group clearer, 113,
or 25 per cent, of the 460 male heads of families were illiterate and
1 13, or slightly less than 20 per cent, of the 579 women who were
joint or sole heads of families. For convenience of study a rough
division is made of the entire group of families studied into (a) il¬
literates, or persons who can neither read nor write; (b) persons
who have had from one to five years of elementary education; (c)
persons who have had five years of elementary training and more.
The second category covers bare literates, those who can read a

129

little but cannot write, those who can figure a little but cannot
read. The third category seems very broad, but remembering that
but few have had more than eighth-grade training, the breadth is
only apparent. Of the 460 male heads of families, for example,
only 27 had more than eight years of schooling. The group of bare
literates contained about half of the male heads of families, and
those with five years or more of schooling amounted to 117, or
about the same proportion as the illiterates. The women were, on
the whole, a trifle more advanced in this respect than the men.
Thirty per cent of them fell in the class of bare literates, as com¬
pared with 50 per cent of the men, and 35 per cent of them had
five years or more of education as compared with 25 per cent of
the men. No correlation was observed between the education of
husband and wife. In 44 families both were illiterate.

A further measure of the literacy of the group is in the books and
periodicals read. There were 452 families, or a little over 73 per
cent, in which there were no books of any sort, and 520, or about
85 per cent, in which there was no periodical or newspaper of any
type. Where books were found they were, for the most part, a
Bible, mail-order catalogues, almanacs, and the type of bright-
colored volumes sold by book agents. In 140 homes books of some
type were found, and in two of these homes there were as many
as 100 volumes. Thirty-six families subscribed to a farm journal,
9 read a daily paper, and 7 received a weekly periodical.

Reading and writing are not a serious part of the routine of
daily life for either adults or children. The oldest people easily
excuse their illiteracy by explaining that “people didn’t go to
school in them days like they do now.” Many of them have a hard
common sense about their work and ordinary relations, and some,
though former slaves and illiterate themselves, reveal a firm belief
in the mysterious power of education to accomplish fuller freedom
for their children. For them writing is a vital symbol, and the
ability to write a key to power. Sarah Key was one such person.
She was positive that there was good in this form of knowledge,
because white folks had been so particular to keep it away from
Negroes.

130

When I come along niggers didn’t know nothing ’bout writing. Arch
[a fellow-slave] was the only nigger ’round who could write. He done
learned carrying the white folks’ chillun to school. When Master found
Arch could read he fainted. And he didn’t find out till after the war.
He said, “Arch, you done been to war wid me, slept wid me, and eat wid
me. If I’d a knowed you could read I woulda done had your arm tuk
off.”

When come time to sign warrants to keep on working for Master after
’mancipation, the white folks would write our names down and we would
make signs, ’cause we couldn’t write. But Arch could write and that was
when Master ’scovered it and fainted. He said, “All de niggers done
sign to stay dis year, but you git off. You done stayed in war wid me
four years and I ain’t know that was in you. Now I ain’t got no confi¬
dence in you.”

In the next generation, however, although the tradition that an
education was unnecessary persisted strongly, having effect in the
failure or inability of many of them to send their children to school,
these children on reaching the status of adults reflected a conscious¬
ness of the deficiency. A man in his forties confided: “My mother,
when I was a baby, didn’t seem to think I ought to have an educa¬
tion. I been embarrassed too. I said a many a time, if my mother
had sent me to school I would a been a man.”

Those persons now in their thirties and forties who went to the
schools of the section did so fitfully and during the months when
they could be spared from the farming. The fact that women were
less useful than men in certain types of cotton cultivation, for
example, may account for the larger aggregate of months in school,
and their consequent advantage in education.

All that is remembered of this period of schooling is Webster’s
blue-back speller, used in school; the almanac and Bible; and the
crudely severe discipline associated with instruction. “I studied
the blue-back speller, too. I can remember just as well when we
used to go to school with the almanac. That’s all we had to read out
of.” Some of the regrets of the grown-ups concern their own rather
than their parents’ early disinclinations toward education.

My folks wanted me to go to school, but I was scared of whuppings so
I never would go. I uster hide behind the pines ’stid of going to school.

All the others what went got good learning. Some of them school-teach¬
ers. The teacher whupped me once, and I didn’t want to go back no
more. When my mother found out I wasn’t going she whupped me till
I like to had spasms. She knocked a hole in my head. After that she
kept me home and made me learn to cook, milk the cows, and sew for the
other children.

There is a wistfulness about some of the reflections on the lack of
education. A tenant from one plantation said: “The world wasn’t
in light when I was growing up like it is now. Just ignorance.
I hated it after the world come into more light.” This new desire
has come to some late in life, and they have tried vainly and patheti¬
cally to do something about it. It is exceedingly difficult to pick
up an education outside of the classroom, and there are limits to
both the age and the size of pupils in the lowest grades, and to the
time for going to school once one has grown up. The sensitiveness
to educational deficiencies becomes a fairly reliable index to chang¬
ing attitudes toward their surroundings, and a desire for general
improvement in their status. “I fuss with my people in my sleep
now ’cause they didn’t give me no schooling. I bought me a book
and tried to study but my eyes is getting so bad I can’t do noth¬
ing like that.”

By far the greater number of the middle-aged illiterates and
bare literates explain that they did not go to school because they
had to work. For some of them it was a matter of pride that they
began their working life so early, and their compensation is the
possession of a sufficient “mother-wit” for the ordinary problems
of their life. “I can’t read writing but I got good mother-wit”
carries with it little apology for illiteracy. A Negro farmer who
operates a small store boasted: “I ain’t been to school, but they
can’t cheat me none figuring.” For others this deficiency is im¬
portant and one for which they are inclined to blame work. “I
didn’t git nowhere in school. I’m sorry to say I had to work all my
life, and I didn’t git to go.”

The most pronounced change in attitude is now observed among
the present parents of the youngest and last generation, who view
these values over a wide range. “I tries to send my boy to school

x32

’cause I guess it’s your brains now what carries you through this
world . I used to think it was disgraceful for a married wom¬

an to taught school. It’s not that way now.”

One chief element in the zeal for more education for their chil¬
dren is the desire to escape a dismal economic plight. Alvin Boyd,
in course of explaining his personal situation, revealed the future
plans for his daughter which had been carefully developed by him.
He was making a desperate effort to get out of debt and stay out.
“We ain’t had no advances and I ain’t mortgaging nothing this
year. Buying my own groceries and feeding ourselves. It ain’t
much, but I’m tired of mortgaging my family. That’s just the
reason I’m trying to prepare my little girl.”

Of our 612 families, 160 had no children, 146 had children, but
none in school, and 276 families had 622 children in school. There
were 1,344 whose ages were known among the 412 families with
children. Of these, 1,041 were of school age. The 622 in school
were 59.7 per cent of the children of school age, somewhat more
than half. Some of those out of school are now too old for their
grades; some, though still young, were married or unmarried
mothers with children of their own to take care of; and still others,
also young, were too seriously needed in the field to be spared for
school. Large families have on occasion decided arbitrarily to edu¬
cate two or three of their children and let the others work, at¬
tempting thereby to serve at the same time the ends of both work
and education.

Although being registered in a school does not mean regular at¬
tendance, there were many children who could not go to school
at all. Children in the family over eight are considered full farm
hands, and only in exceptional cases were they found attending
school. Again, children do not begin school until they are six years
old. Taking into account the children between six and nineteen
who were actually present and living in families, 553 were enrolled
and 229 were not enrolled in school. After passing fourteen they
began to drop out. In the families generally the youngest
school ages were not in school. The figures would run as shown
in Table XVII. In the total number of children of school age who

*33

should be in school there were four whose grades could not be
learned and three who though colored were allowed to attend a
white school on one of the plantations. The interruption of school
work as well as the character of instruction and for one reason or
the other the inability of the children to be advanced in grades
are suggested in the grade-standing of 553 children of various ages
who are in school.

TABLE XVI

Age No.

Six-year-olds out of school . 48

Seven-year-olds out of school . 23

Eight-year-olds out of school . 7

Nine-year-olds out of school . 10

Ten-year-olds out of school . 5

Eleven-year-olds out of school . 7

Twelve-year-olds out of school . 11

Thirteen-year-olds out of school . 5

Fourteen-year-olds out of school . 8

Fifteen-year-olds out of school . 11

Sixteen-year-olds out of school . 24

Seventeen-year-olds out of school . 26

Eighteen-year-olds out of school . 25

Nineteen-year-olds out of school . 19

Total . 229

The usual period during which school is kept open is October to
May. Attendance fluctuates by months to such an extent as to
keep the school work seriously disorganized and render impossible
very consistent learning on the part of the children. There is full¬
est attendance when children are not needed in the field. Other
factors, however, enter in to affect school attendance. Lack of
sufficient clothing, and in winter particularly the lack of shoes,
keeps children away. Distance is another and extremely impor¬
tant factor. They walk usually from one to five miles and back
each school day, for there is no service of bus conveyance such as
is provided for white children of the county. At one school two
children from the same family walked fourteen miles a day. Again,

J34

the cost of books, the special fees to supplement the teachers’
pay — “for teacher’s board,” the families explain — keep the num¬
bers down. The teachers, although practically dependent upon

TABLE XVII

Age-Grades of Children of 612 Macon County Families in School

Age

Grade

VII

Grade

VIII

Grade

XII

Total

6 .

. . . .

39
55
43
42

7 .

1 1

8 .

Q .

IO .

11 .

1 1

12 .

14 .

J5 .

16 .

J7 .

18 .

IQ .

20 .

21 .

Total. . .

50 per
cent . .

Per cent

over

age . . .

Per cent
under
age . . .

Per cent
at age.

176

1 1

553

8-75

10.8

12.78

14.00

14.9

16.0

15.8

17.6

16.8

16 . 8

17.66

19-3

67.1

79-3

88.7

86.7

82.9

91 .6

82.1

91 .0

77.8

42.9

333

66 . 6

0.0

2.8

I -4

2.1

2.0

0.0

1 1 . 1

0.0

33-3

32.9

20.7

8.4

11 -9

14.9

6.2

17.8

9.0

II . I

57-i

66.6 1 .0

these fees, do not always feel disposed to insist on them, particu¬
larly when it means losing the child because his parents could not
provide the sums required. There are other occasions bringing
urgent demands for money which the ordinary tenant families do

not have. The introduction of sanitation, for example, sometimes
means payment by the families for the building of approved toilets.
If the schools are fortunate enough to get a competent teacher with
ideas and a program, the extra items, such as simple playground
equipment, must be privately purchased by the community.

Two of the schools attended by the children of these families
were held in a small church. One of the teachers was a young
woman of about ninth-grade standing; the other, an older woman,
crude but resourceful, was passionately devoted to the education of
these children, but handicapped both by her own deficient back¬
ground and by the lack of physical equipment, including a school-
house.

The first Rosenwald School was built in Alabama in an adjoin¬
ing county, inaugurating a vast school program which eventually
included all of the southern states. The extent of schooling possi¬
ble in Macon County may be roughly indicated by the figures on
expenditures for teachers’ salaries in the county. In 1930 there were
in the entire county 8,580 educables, 1,435 white and 7,145 Ne¬
groes. For the 1,435 white children there was expended $57,385
and for the 7,145 Negro children $27,813. Alabama is, of course,
one of the states with least ability to support education, and the
expenditure for white children is seriously below the standard for
the country at large. Moreover, although the ratio of expenditure
has remained about the same over the last fifteen years, the
amounts spent had been somewhat increased. In 1915 the total
amount spent for 9,136 children was $28,792, of which sum $19,247
went for teachers’ salaries for 1,283 white children and $9,545 for
teachers’ salaries for 7,853 Negro children.

THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOLING ON
SOCIAL CHANGES

One of the ways in which isolation is broken down is by literacy.
Formal schooling both introduces, and is an evidence of, the in¬
fluence of the new and presumably higher standards from the out¬
side for the group. In the quite confusing mixture of influences

136

marking the life of the families in this community, it transpires
that years of schooling provide an index of a sort for measuring
important social differences, as well as changes. It is one of the
striking observations of this study that parents’ education is corre¬
lated with differences among families with respect to (i) size of
family, (2) economic self-sufficiency, (3) the numbers of stillbirths
and miscarriages, (4) infant mortality, (5) the amount of sickness,
and (6) the attitudes of families toward themselves and toward life.

The number of children in the families shows significant varia¬
tions according to the education of the wife. It appears that the

TABLE XVIII

Number of Families with Specified Number of Children in School

Education of
Mother

Un¬

known

None

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Total

Dead or away.

Unknown .

Illiterate .

11 3

Four years or
less .

189

Five years or
more .

1 16

225

Total .

337

104

612

educational status of the husband or male head of the house had
no appreciable effect on the number of children in the home. In 49,
or 43.3 per cent, of the 1 13 families in which the wife was illiterate,
there were no children present. In the 189 families where the
mother had a fourth-grade education or less, 49, or 26 per cent, of
the families were without children. In the 225 families with moth¬
ers or the female heads with a fifth-grade education or more, 25 per
cent of the families showed no children present. In families where
the wives were illiterate, there was on an average of 1 .4 child to a
family when all families were considered and 2.4 children when
only those with children were considered. In the families where
wives had an education of five or more grades, there was on an
average of 2.5 children to a family when all families were consid-

J37

ered or 3.3 children to a family when only those families with
children were used as a basis. The reason for the few children in
the illiterate families is apparently the higher death-rate and the
number of broken homes among the illiterate families.

Taking into account only those families with children, 29, or
45.3 per cent, of the 64 families in which the wives were illiterate
had no children in school; 42, or 30 per cent, of the 140 families
with women who had at most a fourth-grade education had no
children in school; and 60, or 35 per cent, of the families with the

TABLE XIX

Number of Families with Stated Numbers of Children

Children

Education of Mother

None

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Elev¬

Total

Dead or away .

Unknown .

Illiterate .

11 3

Four years or less. . . .

189

Five years or more . . .

1 1

225

Total .

189

127

612

most education had no children in school. A better comparison
of these three types of families in regard to the schooling of the
children is obtained by getting the percentage of all the children
in each group in school. There were 165 children in the 64 families
with illiterate mothers. Sixty-eight, or 41 per cent, of these chil¬
dren were in school. There were 450 children in the 146 families
with female heads who had four years of schooling or less. Two
hundred and seventeen, or 48.2 per cent, of these children were in
school. There were 562 children in the 169 families in which the
female head had a fifth-grade education or more. Two hundred and
fifty-three, or 45 per cent, of these children were in school. Further
speculation would lead one to conclude that since the rearing of
children is chiefly the task of the wife, better education on the

138

part of the mother should insure the child greater care of its phys¬
ical needs as well as hold the child to the family group.

The number of stillbirths and miscarriages in these families is a
significant index to the health of the people as well as to the rate
of survival. In the 1 13 families in which the mother was illiterate,
stillbirths and miscarriages occurred in 44.3 per cent of the fami¬
lies. When the wife had a fourth-grade education or less, these
accidents occurred in about the same proportion. But when the
wife had a fifth-grade or more of education, stillbirths and mis-

TABLE XX

Number of Stillbirths and Miscarriages in Relation to
Years of Schooling of Mother

Education of Mother

Un¬

known

None

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Sev¬

Eight

Nine

Ten

Total

Dead or away .

Unknown .

Illiterate .

IT3

Four years or less. . .

104

189

Five years or more . .

148

1 1

225

Total .

368

117

612

carriages had occurred in only 34 per cent of the families. The
average number of stillbirths for the families having had still¬
births showed the same variations for these three classes. The
average number of stillbirths and miscarriages for the illiterate
mothers was 2.1 children and the same figure for the mothers with
a fourth-grade or less education. In the families where the mother
had a fifth-grade or more education, the average number of still¬
births and miscarriages was 1.8 children.

In the case of 30 male farm-owners, 7 were illiterate, 1 1 had
four years of schooling or less, and 13 had five years of schooling
and more. Once a farmer with children finds himself with a meager
surplus, he faces the question of schooling for the children, and if
there is some small beginning in education for the parents, the de¬
sire is moved to carry it further in the children. One woman said:

l39

My husband make plenty of something to eat all the time. We spend
right smart for clothes; I reckon we spent out $40 for clothes and shoes

last year . My daughter takes some magazines, but I read them.

My daughter is down in Tuskegee taking college. She teaches down

about Uriah and go to college in summer . My son repeated the

six grade ’cause I haven’t got him off to high school yet.

There were few farm-owners who either did not have some educa¬
tion themselves or were not attempting to provide it for their
children, and with equal frequency it was observed that the begin¬
nings of family life founded upon advanced standards with respect
to morals, responsibility, or health were associated with interest
in schooling.

It was not surprising that a farm-owner with a family of chil¬
dren, “all mine and my wife’s,” had learned his trade of carpentry
at Tuskegee and had a daughter in school in Montgomery in
training for nursing. Said one proud father: “I didn’t get the
chance to go to school very much, but the chillun dey all fine
scholars; can figure and write. Read this from the Bible for ’em,

’Lizabeth . Waid a minute; I will show you a picture of my

gal Mattie Belle. She in school.”

The account of one woman who had advanced a full measure
beyond her slave parents is a good and full example. Her house,
which she had inherited from her father, stood out among her
neighbors like something grossly out of place. It was well painted
and screened, with a comfortable and well-arranged living-room.
She herself was alert and intelligent although there were few con¬
genial families around her.

My father bought this place and left it here for me. We were here
when they first began to run cars and they used to mire up right here in
front of the house. My father used to make extra money pulling cars out

with his mules . Things certainly change, don’t they? He didn’t do

anything but farm. He came up under the yoke of slavery. I went to Tus¬
kegee and Spelman, too. I have 46 acres here and pay $18.70 taxes. I eat
vegetables mostly. I guess that’s why I am healthy. I haven’t had a
doctor in so long I can’t remember when it was. My father has been
dead eight years now, and I just live here by myself. Perhaps some man
would like to have the property but they don’t seem to want me, so I
just let them alone.

140

Farm-ownership makes a difference in numbers of children in
school and the number of years which these children are retarded.
Children of owners make a better showing than the average for the
schools. Then there are children who, though in families, are not
in normal family units: grandchildren, adopted children, illegiti¬
mate children being reared by relations or friends of the mother,
children from homes in which one parent is missing. Such children
when separated from the totals make a poorer showing than the
average.

TABLE XXI

Of 37 children of owners between six and nineteen years of age,
only 2 were out of school and these 2 were sixteen and seventeen
years old. The group of children from the broken or irregular
homes totaled 238, and of these 64, or 36 per cent, were out of
school, while 46, or about 15 per cent, were normal or above. The
striking fact is that when all children are considered, the average
child is 3.42 years retarded; when children in broken or irregular
families are taken separately, the average is 3.54 years retarded.
When children of farm-owners are separately considered, the aver¬
age is 2.78 years retarded. There is little difference between the

TABLE XXII

Years over Age of Farm-Owners’ Children

Years over
Age

Grade

III

Grade

VII

Grade

VIII

Grade

XII

Total

I .

2 .

A .

c .

6 .

7 .

8 .

q .

10 .

11 .

12 .

Total . . .

3 -°

4-72

3-5

2.78

Average .

1 .42

2 .O

TABLE XXIII

Years over Age of Children for Broken and Irregular Homes

Years over
Age

Grade

III

Grade

VII

Grade

VIII

Grade

XII

Total

1 .

2 .

3 ■

4 ■

io.
ii .
12.

2
O
O
O

5
2

2
O
2

2
O
I

Total. . .
Average .

2 -32

3-73

22
4.04

5-35

4-4

3-53

2.44

3-33

128

3-53

142

average-family children and the broken-family children so far as
the record of these children is concerned — a fact which seems to be
supported by the similarity of both of these groups under the
identical pressure of the prevailing economic system. The differ¬
ence becomes notable between the owners and the other groups
with an advantage of about eight months of schooling in favor of
children of owners. It is consistent with this trend that the child
most advanced for age (a thirteen-year-old in the ninth grade)
came from a family with the highest recorded family income for
the year.

The irony of the situation seems to be in the fact that the life
of a tenant in the economic system under which they live is not
always congenial when he begins to broaden his horizon. The more
alert and ambitious of the men seem to drift away to southern or
northern cities. A few of the women also leave. This may ex¬
plain why the women still living in the county represent a level of
education slightly above the men. Curiously, when income of
families is divided according to the grades — illiterate, little educa¬
tion, education above the fifth grade — the illiterates were at the
bottom of the scale, those with more than fifth-grade education
ranked next, and those with little education ranked highest. For
example, in the four highest-income brackets — $200-^299, $300-
$399, $400-$499, $500 and over — there were 19 illiterates, 26 with
five years or less of schooling, and 24 with more than five years of
schooling. In the highest of these, $500 and over, there was a
practical advantage for those with five and six years of schooling
but a pronounced falling-off of those with eight years and more.
If the logic of these figures is to be followed, it appears that the en¬
vironment is less hostile to men with little education than to men
with enough to read and write easily. Practically considered, the
most successful families financially are those who are neither too
illiterate to take advantage of their surroundings nor have more
schooling than is demanded by their dependent economic situa¬
tion. They would be expected to thrive best in an environment
that bred few landowners, tolerated few innovations, and placed
a penalty upon too much book-learning.

Occasionally a tragedy gives dramatic vividness to the conflict
arising under the system. Henry Harding had tried for eighteen
years to get somewhere. He studied and read and tried to apply
his knowledge, but without effect. Every time he tried to help
himself his situation tightened. But a tenant trying to support
a family on fifteen acres and send some of his children to school
has a small chance. He began to brood. His wife, Mary Harding,
told briefly his story:

My husband was an intelligent man. He nearly finished Tuskegee. He
had worked hard but we had lost all we had. On his fiftieth birthday,
the twenty-fourth of November, we worked in the field all day and he
kept saying he wouldn’t be here long, and he wanted us to hurry up and
get the cotton picked. It made me nervous. Every time he’d come home
I’d send the boy behind him ’cause I didn’t know what he might do. We
took some potash from him one night. He wouldn’t eat no supper. When
I got through supper I was reading a “true story.” I likes to read True
Stories and he knowed so much he took it from me and told me ter stop
reading that junk. Hit was on Thanksgiving Day and they was bringing
my girl home from Tuskegee School to visit. I always will believe that
he lost his mind, for he got outta bed and wandered out dere in the field.
Then he got holt of some more potash and et it, and died and never said
what he lost hisself fer. He just suicided and killed hisself.

The influence of Tuskegee extended into the community and in
an interesting manner. In point of distance this institution was
from ten to twenty miles removed from the families of this study.
There was also a cultural and social distance. There were members
of the community who had attended school, learned trades, and
returned. Booker T. Washington was remembered and liked by
some of the older individuals. He was twice referred to in course of
comment upon themselves and their interests. In Sambo the
cabins had been whitewashed in preparation for a visit from him
about twenty years ago. He came — a great man with a personality
which took them in, which understood them, and which they could
understand. On another occasion an old woman had remembered
an antipathy which he expressed toward fishing as a recreation.
He had said that it was a lazy man’s sport, and she confessed to
having adopted his prejudice. The extension program of the in-

stitution had registered at points, particularly around Shorter.
The wife of a farmer in Shorter was just coming home on one of
our visits. She had been out on one of the canning-club meetings.
Said she: “You just come in time or I wouldn’t be here. I just
come from the Farmers’ Canning Club. We sure had good eatin’s
today. We done stuffed salads with beets, raw cabbage, and made
this here mayonnaise to go on it. You know Miss D - , I reckon ?

In one instance there was reference to an association which exist¬
ed with the purpose of aiding Negroes in the purchase of farms.
This association was not active now. One Negro had taken in a
considerable amount of land on default, and was attempting to
manage his tenants under more approved regulations. He had
many complaints about the reaction of the Negro tenants to the
relaxed discipline and was then very discouraged with prospects
generally. There were two teachers in the community who had
studied at Tuskegee.

Beyond this touch of intimacy there were those who “went up
to commencement.” Some of them had relatives in the school;
others went to see. The town of Tuskegee, which is the county
seat, shared interest to some extent with the school. It is for the
horse-and-wagon travelers a good day’s journey, and few of them
have animals of their own or conveyances of any sort.

Students from this section who had come back to live apparently
found it extremely difficult to escape the main currents of life in
the community. But most often they were to be found among that
small group that aimed at self-improvement and economic inde¬
pendence, although against manifest odds. Ralph Roy went out
from the community to Tuskegee, where he learned the trade of
blacksmithing. He belonged to a family in which five grown
brothers and four sisters lived together in one house. Each son
cultivated a stipulated amount of land on a co-operative basis.
The farm was left to them by the father, since dead. The home of
the Roys was one of the few places where the kitchen was not used
as a bedroom. In the kitchen there was a crudely boxed-offi space
between the stove and a table which was intended as a dining
compartment. The table inside was neatly covered with red oil-

cloth. But the five sons and four daughters slept in the two
rooms. When Ralph came back from school he courted a young
girl, and after a period a child was born. The young woman said
nothing of marriage. She says it did not occur to her at the time.
He was having some difficulty getting established in his trade.
But it disturbed Ralph, and he urged her to marry him and she
did. They have been living together pleasantly since. He has his
blacksmith shop on the place and spends most of his time in it,
although work is slow. Blacksmithing has been steadily declining
and he has found it necessary to follow the pattern of the commu¬
nity in its economic life, by renting a plot of farm land, and for this
he pays a rental of fifty dollars annually.

Thomas Woods “left off* in Junior class in Tuskegee way back
when it wasn’t but four or five buildings there.” His father had
begun buying their present farm in 1890, and had paid a consider¬
able amount on it. When the father died the son continued the
payments, but they lost the property without ever knowing how
much money had been paid. He still lives on the place, however.
Thomas Woods had learned carpentry at Tuskegee. Although he
had lost his home, he had retained certain new desires and inter¬
ests acquired through contact with the institution. He rented land
instead of working on shares. The year before he made eight bales
of cotton which sold for $40 a bale, but when he had paid his
debts he was $140 “in the hole.” However, instead of getting ad¬
vances from a planter he borrowed the money from the bank. This
proved rather expensive because “the interest eats you up.” He
had painted and “rehauled” his home; they have an automobile —
though it does not run. Unlike the mass of tenants he knew what
was wrong, although he could not do very much about it. He
knew that in order to raise more from the soil it would be necessary
to put more labor, tools, fertilizer, and work animals into cultiva¬
tion, and that one had to have money for these instruments of
production; that if everyone did this there would be a surplus
crop which would put all these at naught. “A poor colored per¬
son,” he said, “just got to come up by the hardest.” He and his
wife are not only legally married, but have not been separated

146

from each other for more than a month during their entire married
life of thirty years, for any reason. The wife said: “Only time I
ever stayed away from my husband was a month I was in Dayton,
Ohio. I just stayed that long ’cause they all said I wouldn’t stay.”

Moses Green learned the trade of carpentry and bricklaying at
Tuskegee, over twenty years ago. This is what he said about him¬
self:

I got seven children and they’re all mine and my wife’s.

Pretty big family now since times are so hard, but I manage to get
along. I do little carpenter work for the white and colored folks out here
whenever there is any to be done. Didn’t get much work last year ’cause
people ain’t building no houses. I guess I did ’bout $100 worth of car¬
penter work last year. I learned my trade at Tuskegee, carpentry and
bricklaying. Don’t get much bricklaying to do.

It’s hard to say just how much money I spend for clothes. Got such a
big family. Last year I bought a suit for $5 0 > so I won’t have to buy none
this year. My wife bought a suit last year for $15, and my daughter
bought one for $40. That’s the one I told you goes to school in Mont¬
gomery. Come here, Marguerite, and tell about your school.

Marguerite: I’ve been going to school in Montgomery for three
years, taking nurse training. Ain’t had but six months’ training. The
first year I was sick and had to come home; the second year I was sick
and stayed there in the hospital; and this year I didn’t get but six months’
training. I stay sick all the time, but I’m determined to be a nurse. I
don’t know just what my trouble is; the doctor calls it some kind of
funny name. [Girl tried to think for fully ten minutes but could not give
the name. She didn’t mention how the illness affected her.]

Mother: I think they done worked her too hard.

Father: I didn’t make much of a crop last year. I made a bale of
cotton and got enough to pay back the S40 on the government loan.
The government loan works this way: The government man comes out
to see you and he takes a synopsis of what you have. The owner then
waives the rent until the government is paid, then he has to put in for
his part afterwards. If you don’t make anything the government carries
it over. They [the government] deal with the man straight, not the land¬
lord. They leave a government man who comes around and notifies each
man when the money is due.

I worked with the Bradley Lumber Company from November to
June of this year. Got $60 every two weeks. Worked till the company
went busted, but I’ve got to do a cash business this year ’cause I made
enough money when I was working.

147

Beyond the sense of sharing the new values of the Institute,
there is indication of further social distance. The spirit of race
consciousness has entered and identifies itself with color conscious¬
ness in a manner that places the Tuskegee school in a different
world of relations. A man who hopes to send his son to school
expressed some apprehensions about his ability to fit into the
color scheme.

I wants to send my son to school as far as he can go, but somebody’s
got to speak a word for him up there at Tuskegee. That school ain’t got
no race pride. They ain’t so much on the black ones. All them black
men up to Tuskegee marries yellow women, if they’re able to keep ’em.
You know yellow women want more than black ones. That’s the reason
me and my wife ain’t never separated — she’s good and black . I sup¬

pose if I’d a gone to Tuskegee and had schooling I’d a married a yellow

woman too . So many colored folks only want to be with white folks.

All of them Tuskegee people is like that.

It was evident in this case that there was some confusion between
color and culture, and a conviction that to get along one must
“either look like white or act like white.” The same man, when
talking to a Negro visitor of his own complexion but of considerably
different education and cultural background, asked, “What na¬
tionality is you? You looks colored, but you don’t talk like it, so
I ain’t sure. Do you love colored folks?” Then ruminating further
on the question of color he confided: “I got a cousin. Her pappy

is white. Old Dr. - . Everybody knows that. Well, he sent

her off to school. Now she’s married some white-looking nigger
and teaches school. She warn’t no better’n me but just ’cause
she’s white-skinned she got ahead. I ain’t never done nothing in
my life but I’ve tried to live right and do good.”

The Education of Parents by Children

Children of parents who are zealous to have the mystery of
letters mastered have a new sentimental value for their parents.
They have the key to power, and the great pride of these parents
is to hear them read, not so much because they are interested in
what is read as in the demonstrated ability to understand a printed

148

page. “Come here, Markus,” a parent shouted, “and let the man
hear how you can read.” It is the children who are now intrusted
by their families to keep the ages, because “their minds are
stronger.” They read the letters that occasionally come in from
relatives in distant parts of the country, and bring home the gossip
from the school. The children become, thus, a link with the new
culture. New notions of sanitation and hygiene percolate into the
old homes: the value of screening, the dangers of infection from
careless and ignorant habits, the hazard of open wells and careless
waste disposal. The slow rate of transition, generally, through this
medium appears to be due quite as much to the inadequacy of the
present local elementary schools as to the inability or unwilling¬
ness of the older members of the group to abandon their tradi¬
tional ways.

RELIGION AND THE CHURCH

THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

THE church is the one outstanding institution of the commu¬
nity over which the Negroes themselves exercise control, and
because it stands so alone in administering to their own conception
of their needs, its function is varied. The religious emotions of the
people demand some channel of formal expression, and find it in
the church. But more than this, the church is the most important
center for face-to-face relations. It is in a very real sense a social
institution. It provides a large measure of the recreation and re¬
laxation from the physical stress of life. It is the agency looked
to for aid when misfortune overtakes a person. It offers the me¬
dium for a community feeling, singing together, eating together,
praying together, and indulging in the formal expressions of fellow¬
ship. Above this it holds out a world of escape from the hard ex¬
periences of life common to all. It is the agency which holds to¬
gether the subcommunities and families physically scattered over
a wide area. It exercises some influence over social relations, set¬
ting up certain regulations for behavior, passing judgments which
represent community opinion, censuring and penalizing improper
conduct by expulsion.

The authority of the church here does not appear to be as strong
as in certain other Negro communities, nor does it seem to have,
in its disciplinary restraints, that immediacy which could make it
most effective in controlling conduct.

The notable distinction in growths is between the church as a
social center, the church as an agency of social control, and the
church as the medium of spiritual expansion. With respect to the

1S°

first, there has been a pronounced development; with respect to
the second, the church is less effective than in other communities
with a different organization of Negro life; with respect to the
last, there is a widening gap between doctrine and behavior which
leaves the traditional doctrine empty and unconvincing in relation
to the normal currents of life.

It is respectable to belong to church, and practically all families
retain some degree of connection with it. Only 17 of the 612 fami¬
lies had no church connection. The pattern of religious observ¬
ance was borrowed, like many of their other cultural traits, from
their earlier associations with whites under slavery. Despite the
fact that they now control very largely their own religious organ¬
izations, there have been few adaptations to the changing exigen¬
cies of their own life. The satisfactions derived from this institu¬
tion, apart from such objective indications of social response as
could be observed, are questions related to the character of the
religious experiences of the group with which this account does
not presume to deal.

The community is predominantly Baptist. Methodists rank
next in point of numbers. In 612 families, 439 were Baptists and
147 Methodists (86 A.M.E. and 61 M.E.). These two denomina¬
tions from the beginning of their influence in America made a
pronounced “evangelical appeal to the untutored mind,” and in
time, although not at first especially interested in the Negro, they
drew into their fold most of the Christianized Negro slaves. A
feature of evangelical programs of these two sects wTas the camp
meetings of the Methodists and the protracted meetings of the
Baptists. What the church is now to the Negro the camp meeting
was for the whites of the same section as late as a generation ago.
It was the chief social and religious event of the season, a festive
occasion to some, an intensely religious experience for others.
Negro slaves were allowed to attend them, usually after the white
people had had their session of religious enthusiasm and demon¬
stration. It was during the heyday of their camp meetings and
revivals at the beginning of the nineteenth century that patterns
of religious expression were established. It was at this time that

the ecstatic shouting, screaming, falling, rolling, laughing, jerking,
and even barking of mass hysteria under the stress of religious
enthusiasm, now most commonly regarded as characteristically
Negro emotionalism, came into vogue. Likewise, during this early
period the sermon patterns of exhorting, with accompanying
mannerisms, were first noted. Many of the stereotyped expres¬
sions which go to make up the common prayers may be traced to
the vivid language of these early evangelists. These expressions,
based largely upon scriptural language, are common to many
parts of the country and are as fixed as ritual. Faris suggests the
influence of these patterns on the Negro slave as a possible ex¬
planation of patterns of their own emotionalism in religion:

The social situation in which the American Negro found himself, in all
probability, furnished the pattern by means of which he was guided in
his religious life. Extravagant as these reactions are, they can all be
matched by others just as remarkable in the white race that was the

teacher of the black . Until the last twenty-five years one could be

pretty sure of seeing someone “shout” at the revivals of the white people,
but it has practically died out at present.1

Andrew Polk Watson gathered a group of religious experiences of
Negro former slaves, some of whom recalled their first contact
with these camp meetings: “When the white folks had revivals
the niggers from all around would gather on the outside and listen
at them sing and pray.”2 The present forms of religious observ¬
ance by Negroes in this section may reasonably be assumed to be
survivals of the patterns now largely discarded by whites, and
discarded by many Negroes as well, as they advance from one
level of culture to another. Even more obvious survivals are
such outmoded doctrinary restrictions as the ban upon card-play¬
ing, social dancing, and baseball which, in the present situation
of greatly changed attitudes toward these harmless diversions,
have become so highly artificial in the relationship of the church to
the community. These restrictions, as elsewhere noted, are en-

1 Ellsworth Faris, “The Mental Capacity of Savages,” American Journal of Sociology ,
XXIII, 603.

2 Primitive Religion among Negroes in Tennessee (M.A. dissertation; Fisk University,
■932)> P- 26.

152

forced in a relentless and more insistent manner than perhaps any
others, and by their very strength and sanctity make difficult the
development of new and more fitting controls. For example, ve¬
nereal clinics3 have been established in several of the churches be¬
cause they were the natural social centers, but the social implica¬
tion of these clinics was nowhere recognized. This was important
to the successful operation of the clinic, but a situation which
would have been socially impossible where there was greater so¬
phistication or where the church had translated this health prob¬
lem in terms of social relations.

The independence and consequent lack of organization and
regulation of the Baptist organization probably account for its
vogue in this section as well as in other rural sections. An individ¬
ual of strong personality may become a leader and minister even
if illiterate, provided he knows well the accepted forms of worship
and response. He is required to have a good voice, a power of
imagery, and ability to control his people. To this might be added
the ability to raise money. There is little formal ritual. Such is
not called for in so intimate a community. There are ceremonies,
however. The Methodists are not very different in their modes of
worship, but there is the advantage of a changing ministry, which
permits exposure to new experiences from the outside.

The Church in Action

The Damascus Baptist Church stands at a far junction of the
dusty and tortuous road leading out from Hardaway, with no
other building within sight, or in fact within miles, save an old
and sagging school building close by it. The church is a small,
painfully conventional boxlike structure with gabled roof and a
small bell tower over the entrance. It has once or twice been
whitewashed but is now gray under the long assault of time and
the elements. Two giant oaks at the rear, dripping with a Spanish
trailing moss, give shelter for the horses and mules of the com¬
municants. Back of the schoolhouse with its broken windows and

3 A phase of the Rosenwald Fund demonstration in the mass control of syphilis.

!53

sagging shutters is a small cemetery with boards and short tomb¬
stones jutting up at odd angles to mark the mounds of departed
members. Twelve mules and a horse are hitched to the oak trees,
and farm wagons, still holding empty chairs and baskets, are scat¬
tered about the green. Besides these conveyances are fully a dozen
Ford automobiles, worn and plastered with dry mud, and, loung¬
ing in these cars, engaged in conversation are men, young and old,
carefree and serious. The principal cluster of women and small
children is around a pump which stands midway between the
church and the school. They are drinking with an easy leisure.

Inside the church there are three rows of plain wooden benches.
The walls of the interior are of white, painted, horizontal boards,
and the ceiling, as far up as could be reached, is painted a vivid
green. At the end of the room is a very cluttered rostrum. The
inclined pedestal has the center; the pastor’s seat is directly be¬
hind. Then there are three small benches for the choir, two hat
racks, and an old clock which is out of order. On the wall back of
the rostrum is a large calendar with a picture of Lincoln, an even
larger placard announcing a “drive” for $225,000 on behalf of
Selma University in 1927, a framed crayon portrait of a former
pastor, a placard warning in red letters of the danger of malaria,
and two framed certificates. Beside the rostrum is a coal stove.

There is a cheerful bustling among the two hundred and fifty or
more persons in the building as they fan themselves and accom¬
modate their natural flow of conversation and gossip to the novel¬
ty of church clothes. From one corner of the room a voice is heard
above the hum of conversation, trailing tentatively into a long-
meter hymn. It is the beginning of the preparation for the mood
of worship. The noise of the congregation dies down as the voice
gains in volume and certainty, and others take up the lines. Final¬
ly, the congregation is singing lustily. A deacon of the church rises
and in loud supplication raises a prayer:

Lord our Father who art in Heaven, let your will be done on earth as
it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive our debts
as we forgive those who debt against us, for thine is the Kingdom. Heav¬
enly Father, we feel thankful this morning and ask you to send the Holy

T54

Ghost for Jesus’ sake. Bless these our sisters and brethren, O Lord, our
Heavenly Father, and we want dying men and women to know that be¬
sides you there is no other God before you, and they must know that
they got to give account of all the deeds done in this body.

The audience has been only politely restrained during this part
of his prayer, and the younger members are frankly whispering
and continuing their greetings. There is need of more warmth in
his address to God, and he forsakes the repetition of one set of
stereotypes drawn from lines of scripture for another which has a
more certain response value:

I’m talking about that same God who bled and was crucified and died
on Calvary’s hill; [. almost angrily\ talking about that same God John saw.

There were scattered “Amens.”

Behold the Lamb of God who take away the sins of the world. Have
mercy on us, Lord.

(More “Amens.”)

Father, bless the church, bless the sick and ’flicted; remember the min¬
ister, remember the members, and when we done going up and down the
road be with us and stand by us and the praise will be “Thanks for Christ
our Redeemer’s sake. Amen.”

Before his voice is still a song is raised, a formal hymn:

My soul be on thy guard, ten thousand foes arise
The hosts of sin are pressing
To draw thee from the skies.

Another member, who has stood up in readiness during the last
verses of the hymn, intones:

Lord, our Father, some have gone to the left and some have gone to the
right; O Lord, bless those who stick close to the cross; throw around them
your strong arm of protection; help our dark days, O Lord. You know
you said you would protect us and stand by us. Bless the sick; bless the
Pastor; bless the Deacon Board; help them to lead us and guide us.
Heavenly Father, help us to grow stronger in the faith; be with us and
stand by us. You said a long time ago that if I pray and pray hard you
would hear me again. Bless my sister’s children; bless my mother who
has gone before me. If I don’t ever meet her in this world let me meet
her when we have done done with this old world. Amen.

*55

There is now a more fitting mood for the minister. During
the singing and praying he has been detached, sometimes rapt in
abstraction, sometimes leaning over to whisper matters of practi¬
cal concern over the business of the church. He is a stocky, dark,
elderly man, well aware of his rank as a preacher. Now he is all
attention, and with a heavy solemnity he approaches the pedestal.

My friends, we are very glad to meet you here this morning. [Don't
talk , don't talk.] Everybody ought to be happy today. I am going to ask
Deacon Brown to take all these baskets and carry them right back yon¬
der, out of the way. Some of us could be in our sick rooms, and some of us
could be in our liquish graves, but we are here, and we wants to ask you
for your prayers. ’Tis good to pray. Prayers of the righteous prevaileth
much. Sisters and brothers, God done set time to make things known to
us, and Em not satisfied unless I’m preaching the word of God.

He is reminding his audience of his obligation to preach, of the
unquenchable instinct to evangelism on which a large part of his
authority rests.

The Gospel is the bread of life and it must be preached throughout
the world. One morning this week I felt like preaching. I was jest thirsty
ter preach. You know if you is praying and someone slips up on you, you
gits shame, so I choosed my wife and told her ter watch, and I stood
before the mirrow till my soul was satisfied, and one time I heard her
tipping round by the side of the house ter hear me. Her soul was hungry
too, sisters and brothers. These words were spoken by Paul. Paul was
a great man, you know.

He is a minister who has not lived always in the community, and
he has some basis in his experience for a comparison of his people
with others. He can hold out a light. This is one of the social
functions of the church.

Paul studied education; he didn’t mind going to school. Lots of our
boys and girls don’t lak ter go ter school. We laks ter play hookie. We
turn our back on learnings, but Paul wan’t lak that, and after he edu¬
cated he turned himself as who we call a sheriff terday. You know, sisters
and brothers, after you get an education there is a chance fer you, you
can git a position. You know Paul didn’t know anything ’bout Jesus.
He ain’t come in contact wid Jesus yet. The other day a lady was com¬
ing through the community. Dr. C - and I was passing down the high¬

way, and she greeted us wid a smile, and as far down the road as I saw

156

her I could see the intelligence in her, and later when I talked wid her, I
got acquainted wid her through her smile. That’s the way wid Jesus.

Paul was lak you and I. He was choosen among one hundred and one
thousand men and told “As you go, go and preach the Gospel.” Before
we seek our soul salvation we could go ter the dancing room, and after
the dungeon shuk and chains fell off, we could have a vision wid God.

Instruction is not, however, the main function of the sermon.
There must be enthusiasm, even ecstasy, and the minister who is
incapable of stimulating this is soon out. The reference to educa¬
tion is brief, but it is possible to wax eloquent over the horrible
sin of dancing. This is a part of the dogma of the church which
affects only the younger members, but which is clung to tenacious¬
ly as an element of the respectability of church membership.
Other more serious forms of social behavior prevailing in the com¬
munity are not often touched upon, or if referred to at all it is
done in a spirit of great daring.

Paul ain’t no Christian now; ever’ where he would hear the Gospel
preached he would go and bring the news back ter Jerusalem. Sisters
and brothers, you know ever’where the Gospel is preached the devil is
there to ’sturb the souls of Christians; ain’t many been really borned
again, you know. Them’s that done been borned again is a few. Ana¬
nias done been down ter Damascus, and he said, “I’ll go down ter Damas¬
cus,” oh, yes, my sisters and brothers, he said, “I’ll go down and preach
until they come off the dancing floor and till the dancing mistress pulls
off her dancing shoes; till she change her soul and seeing Jesus is near ter
my soul.” I can see Ananias preaching. He was afraid of Paul. I can
see Paul, oh, yes, I can see him when he got the news that Paul was down
in Damascus, and the devil tuk the British soil, and Paul decided he
would put a stumblingblock in this preacher’s way. Then I can see him
when he went ter Jerusalem ter git his letter and saying, “I want ter go
down ter Damascus where Ananias is preaching, and find him and bring
him back ter Jerusalem.” I can see when the devil began ter write the
letter. Then I kin see him when he went ter the brothers ter go on their
wicked journey.

The words of the minister are not so impressive as the manner in
which he intones them, in an excited singsong. Once well launched,
the audience gives encouragement in their responses: “Amen”;
“Yes, Lord”; “Preach it, boy”; “Uh huh!”; “Have mercy, Jesus”;

T57

“Come, Holy Spirit, we need you now”; “Jesus comes by.” The
imagery, which is most effective, is that which is enshrouded in
the most impenetrable cloud of mystery.

Sisters and brothers, you know God is so high you can’t go over him,
and so wide you can’t go ’round him, and so low you can’t go under him.
Jesus says yer got ter come in by the door. Jesus went down ter Damas¬
cus and saw the people shaking and shouting in glory. He told Ananias
that Paul was riding. Ain’t nobody never heard no voice lak dat before.
Brothers, help me, help me preach this Gospel now.

A point of enthusiastic departure is that of some great conflict of
the soul. This can be made more realistic by sudden allusions to
well-known experiences.

When Paul got ’way down the road on his journey he fell down pros¬
trate on the ground three days. Hallelujah! No doubt the birds was sing¬
ing sweet songs. He got hungry; hungry for bread; thirsty fer water.
“Stay, stay there,” God said; “lay right there three days.” Finally God
tempted him wid his Godlike power. O Paul, O Paul, O, O Paul, did the
Gospel call you one morning wid his still voice? Oh, yes, sisters and
brothers, and he said, “Saul, Saul,” and Paul answered, “Here am I,
Lord. I know I been against thy work; what wilt thou have me ter do?”
He looked at his hands and his hands looked new; looked at his feet and
his feet looked new; and, O sisters and brothers, he said, “Git on your
journey, Saul, and keep on down ter Damascus. Don’t go back ter
Jerusalem.” Oh, no, I’m not afraid of praying. I can see Jesus going
down ter Damascus. The people was sick and he opened the door and
said ter Ananias, “Don’t be afraid of Paul. Paul is coming in the morn¬
ing. If you get tired of setting, go right in the house of Judea.” God done
told Paul that Ananias would meet him, and he tell one that the child
of God done tuk his feet out of the miry clay and waited for Ananias.
I’m talking wid my God, sisters and brothers, and that makes everything
all right, and soon that morning Ananias made an address ter Paul;
the greatest ever been made in the world. Paul go on back ter Jerusalem.
God done purged Paul wid the Holy Ghost on high. Paul said, “I’m
gonna preach from on high.” Brothers and sisters, they was standing on
the highway. I can see them now. The world was waiting. I can see
the children bound by the hands of the devil standing by the wayside.
Look at him; jest listen how he preached. Hallelujah ! He jest wanted
ter join Christ’s men. The people done heard so much bout Paul some
of them was so ’fraid, some started to murder him. But somebody tuk
him from the mob crowd by the wall. Sisters and brothers, that was the

i5s

Holy Ghost. Chillen, if you pray the world can’t do you no harm. The
first morning Paul went out he ’suited wid God. He met my friend, O
God! Preached until men believed. When Paul started on his second
missionary journey he said, “O God, who must I git ter go wid me?”
and Jesus said, “Go on the outskirts of the city of Philippi. Believe I
am the Son of God. A woman stays there; she is a po’ woman, but she
will give you room in her home. You stay there.” I can see, brothers —
I can see, brothers — he began preaching the Gospel. I believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God. People begin ter git on easy, but he preached
on and on till they began ter believe and thirst for the word of God.
But soon they tuk Paul and Silas and bound ’em in the jail.

The dramatization of incidents of the New Testament constitutes
a large part of the sermon, but the experiences are so related as to
make it possible for his people to identify themselves with the
characters in this great struggle. All that God asks either of an¬
cient and eminent Saul or of modern and humble Susie Keys is
faith and prayer.

I can see when they began ter put them in the Philippi jail. Children,
have you prayed? I done prayed. Silas asked, “What will we do?” Paul
said', “I want ter have a little talk wid God.” Chillen, I tell you a child
of God has a hard time in this world.

Preacher sits down, still speaking:

Night come and the roosters didn’t crow. Birds wan’t singing no sweet
songs. Cows wan’t chewing no cuds. Way, way in the night — chillen,
do you ever pray in the night? I heard old Saul singing, “Amazin’ grace,
how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” ’Bout that time old
Paul said, “Lord, O Lord, you promised good ter me. You is my swrord
and shield, and you got my portion due.” Then Paul said, “Jesus, I am
your child.” Then Jesus told his angel to “git two wings ter cover your
head, two ter cover your feet, go down ter Jerusalem and shake jail, and
buckle loose the jail and let my chillen free.” “Take this key of gold.”
Looka yonder, looka yonder, chillen.

[Getting up.] ’Fore day Paul on one side an Silas on the other. Silas
said, “Lord, Lord, what will you have me ter do?” He said ter him,
“Stand right there; don’t move a step.”

The shouting has begun with sudden sharp groans of spiritual
torture, then screams of exultation. Three or four persons are ex¬
pressing themselves with shouts accompanied by a variety of phys-

J59

ical demonstrations, while most of the audience responds in low
accents. There is a phase of worship referred to as “helpin’ out”
the preacher, in which a line will be repeated several times by the
minister or even a leader from the floor, and the audience joins
in with a low moan. “The mountain so high, but I’m coming on”;
“Lord, I done started and I can’t turn back”; “Lord, I didn’t
come here for to do no harm”; “Trouble done been here, calling
us a long ways”; “Well, you talk about Jesus; he’s a friend of
mine”; “Well, it’s all night long I’m on my knees”; “I jest come
here, Lord, for to sing and pray”; “Well, I feel like moaning.
. . . The preacher continues:

When the clouds swing high over your head say, “World, World, O
World, I done fought a good fight. Sometimes my heart was bleeding,
sometimes runned over and called ever’thing ’cept a child God.” Sisters,
is you on the right track? Is all your tickets been signed and your chains
fell off? Did you tell ever’body, the white, the colored, the po’, the sick?
Is you got a letter written in your heart? Makes your heart burn, makes
you cry, makes you laugh. Is you done told ever’body? Oh, yes, ever’¬
body! Amen, Amen.

Song: “Long Ago.”

I think somebody oughta get ’quainted wid Jesus. We gonna sing while
the doors of the church be open.

My soul, be on thy guard,

Ten thousand foes arise.

The hosts of sin are pressing hard
To draw me from the skies.

Someone wid de spirit please come ter the altar and pray.

An old man arises and grips the bench ahead, with heavy, gnarled
hands:

O my Heavenly Father, hit is again I done bowed on my knees ter
give thanks fer thy holy name. Nothing we feel worthy ter offer Thee but
a sinful heart fer your judgment. We bow not fer show ter the world, and
not ter be well spoke of but because we know we got ter die. You done
lent us this life and, Heavenly Father, we got a duty ter perform. We
come first thanking Thee for this guidance. Help us ter rastle wid the
combats of the world. Don’t let us get weak on the way. In acts of con¬
fusion guide us and we will follow. Lord, lead us we ask Thee. We thank

160

Thee that we is working for a Kingdom not made wid hands. We are
following you, Captain Jesus, ’cause you said your Kingdom last always.
Sometimes, Jesus, you know the devil gits us by the hand, but we want
you ter catch us by the hand and lead us out. Amen.

The song which follows is one of humble triumph:

My Lord done been here, blessed my soul, and gone away.

I wouldn’t be a sinner, I’ll tell you the reason why —

If my Lord God would come here I wouldn’t be ready to die.

My Lord done been here, blessed my soul, and gone away.

I wouldn’t be a gambler, I’ll tell you the reason why —

If my good Lord would come here I wouldn’t be ready to die.

The preacher has done his duty in arousing the audience. He turns
again to the problem of behavior.

My friends, we done sung the songs of Zion; done broke ter you the
bread of life; done opened ter you de doors of de church; and done
prayed these ’firmed prayers; and still there’s more. You know I thinks
’bout the people in the community; how can you dance when there’s a
starvin’ family over there? When you been dancing all Saturday night
you ain’t a fit subject fer the Lord. You gotta cut the dancing out. If
you go up there ter the graveyard you’ll see just as many short graves
as long un’s. You oughta quit dancing. You say you is a Christian; if
you is a Christian you better show some signs. If you don’t quit you’re on
the road to hell; talkin’ ’bout you ’blige ter dance and you can’t help it.
’Member in Noah’s time, when the world was ’stroyed? Last night me
and my wife was settin’ outside the house and we heard singing and
dancing, and here starvation is in your meal barrel. The old folks talking
’bout chillen young gotta have some fun, but they just stumblingblocks in
their way. I laks ball games well as you, but I don’t lak ter hear my mem¬
bers down there cussin’. Then you don’t ’speck your pastor when you
see him in all places. Me and my wife sets out ever’ Saturday instead
and reads God’s word. You ought not ter do things ’gainst the plans of
salvation. You ought ter show some signs of Christians down there. If
you can act it at the church and on the roads and in the fields you can
act it down there. Chillen, you better quit dancing. Now next month
when the convention meets in Birmingham, I wants you sisters and
brothers ter git around and git your pastor a seersucker suit, some socks,
and some shirts. And I need shoes too. I gotta go down there and rep¬
resent you, and I wanta do hit right.

1 6 1

The collection is lifted. Four young men stand before the pulpit
and begin to sing, while two deacons stand by the table and
persuade the members to come up and contribute.

The Funeral of Brother Jesse Harding

This funeral ceremony is reproduced in its entirety because it
reflects many facets of community life. There is evident in the
behavior of the people the conflict of certain new notions from the
outside with their own traditional modes of life. The deceased
represented standards and ideals out of relation to the common
exigencies of life in the community. Moreover, the church, while
attempting to defend the deceased’s right to proper burial based
upon his successful career as a business man, was itself aggrieved
over his indifference to the institution. Finally, there is indicated
in the physical features of the ceremony the manner in which new
articles of material culture are introduced into the group. There
is a tacit questioning of the authority of the church to exact cere¬
monial observance where group sanctions have been disregarded
by the deceased.

Jesse Harding, although a landowner, was not well liked in the
community. He belonged to a family of landowners founded by
his father many years ago. There are a few others in the com¬
munity who own land, but Jesse Harding was a fairly successful
farmer and above all a good business man. He did not share the
spirit of the community in which, even in the aggregate, there was
little property. He was honest, straightforward, paying his own
debts and exacting payment of debts to him. During the war he
had been drafted and carried to France. It gave him a chance to
get away from the community and observe how things were done.
Under different circumstances, perhaps, his life would have been
considered worthy of emulation for his thrift and foresight. But
not in this community. The people came to the funeral, but there
was neither praise of his life nor sorrow over his passing. All the
devices of the preacher failed to stir them to any of the usual
demonstrations of grief which even strangers may command, or
to participate in the ceremony with any sort of unction.

162

At about three o’clock on Sunday the bell began to toll. It was
the signal that the procession was moving to the church. The
crowd that had been sitting around since the morning service,
chatting and eating, jumped up and crowded around the windows
and doors to watch the approach of the body and the mourners.
Those who had been waiting outside began pushing in for seats,
and there was much talking and gossiping, most of which was
about the deceased. The preacher came in, showing traces of both
excitement and anger. Mounting the rostrum, he raised his hands,
but the tumult continued. Then he spoke: “Everybody hush
your mouths. You ain’t at no frolic; you’re at a funeral. Now
don’t nobody talk. We ain’t at no corn-shucking. You all talk
like you at a moving-picture show.” His remarks had been ill
chosen, for there was tittering over his reference to frolics and
picture shows. He tried another appeal. “Be quiet, please. Don’t
talk. Sh . . . . Who’s that talking over there, and I told them to
stop talking? If white folks had a been in here you could a heard
a pin drop.” This was not only a warning by suggestion; it was a
confession. The shadow of the plantation extended even into their
most intimate institutions.

Quiet followed, but whether from fear or shame or satiety was
not clear. The preacher continued: “Now you know we will have
to have two or three seats here for the family. You all [ pointing
to a group before him ] just move out, please, and let the family
have these front seats.” Having settled his audience, he picked
up his Bible swiftly and stumbled down the aisle to meet the
family and the corpse, now waiting at the door. He found them
and started back with hardly a pause, leading them to the front,
chanting solemnly:

Man that is born of a woman is few days and full of trouble. He
cometh forth like a flower .... [ everybody stand up\ .... and is cut
down. He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not, etc .

The choir sang:

There is rest for the weary
On the other side of Jordan,
There is rest for me.

The preacher spoke again. ‘Tm going to ask you all once more to

please give the family all the front seats . ”

When I come to die .

He carried these last words smoothly into a spiritual:

I want to be ready, I want to be ready,

To walk in Jerusalem just like John.

A deacon offered up a perfunctory and almost completely stereo¬
typed prayer, during which the pastor shouted several times,
“You better pray,” and the audience responded with low and dole¬
ful moans, more like a learned song than the spontaneous expres¬
sion of feeling. Another song, “Beautiful land of God,” and the
preacher announced: “We are going to spend about ten minutes
to have Brother Wiley and Brother Saunders to say a few words.
The family has asked that they say a few words, and I will give
them just about three minutes each.” Brother Saunders arose
briskly. He was one of the few persons of the community who
had known the deceased well and could appreciate his curious ob¬
jectives in life.

Pastor, Members, and Friends of Damascus Baptist Church: I
have known this young man practically all his life. He stayed right here
and was with us all the time. I can say this young man was a real man;
you know you can’t say this about all men and women, but he was a
real man; a man that was worth while. He served his country and that
was the cause of his death. Mr. Harding was a real business man; he
didn’t play; he didn’t believe in no foolishness. If you want to do business
with him it was all right, but if you went for foolishness he didn’t have
no time for you, and everything he said was just about true. You could
believe him if you wanted to, but what he said was so. I come to see him
last Wednesday a week ago, and we set down on the porch and talked; I
with him and him with me. He started to talk about death, and I told
him that death would take care of itself, and I started talking about
something else. He said “Let’s talk about death, because you know I got
to go ’cording to the Scripture. I got to go to another building, and you
know I got to go.’’ I want to say to you all, be you a man or a woman, if
you live for something you will die for something.

The audience had listened only half-heartedly, restlessly, and with
none of the emotions which a funeral is expected to evoke. Brother

164

Wiley sensed this, and, after a brief allusion to the coldness, made a
very perfunctory remark and sat down without further endangering
his standing with the audience. He said: “This seems to be a
mighty quiet funeral. You don’t find many of our funerals so quiet.
We are here on a very sad occasion. I been knowing Brother Jesse
for a long time, and we thought a lot of him in this community.”
The preacher felt a challenge to his greatest skill in arousing this au¬
dience to the appropriate feeling for such an occasion. But he had
great difficulty in finding words. His sermon offers a remarkable
example of forced movement, from the platitudes of the beginning
to the artificial “rousements.” “Friends, this is a very sad occa¬
sion,” he reminded them again. “Brother Jesse was converted
under Rev. Dr. Banks, who has gone on to heaven.” Still getting
his bearings: “Brother Wiley and Brother Saunders has given you
some very good talks.” The chill of the audience bore down upon
him, and he admitted, almost bargainwise: “Brother Jesse had his
faults, like you and me. I talked with him at home and at the
hospital.” He excused himself for not visiting him at the hospital
oftener: “They had to ask me to not come to the hospital so much,
’cause there was so many sick folks just like Brother Jesse.”
Everybody knew the deceased’s forthrightness and it could be
mentioned again.

Brother Jesse was the business man of the Harding family. The old
man was lucky before them; all of that family has been lucky. He was
a keen business man. If you went to ask him about a certain thing, and
he tell you ain’t nothing to it, it wasn’t nothing to it, and that’s all there
is to it.

Then, reading the faces of his audience, he faced the issue squarely:

I know you all waiting to see what I’m going to say. Brother Jesse
told me, and not only me but others, that he didn’t go to church as often
as he ought to have. But God has forgive him for that. I’m saying this
for the other young men here that ain’t been to church before this year.
God ain’t gonna love you. Jesse didn’t go to church as he ought to have,
but I tell you one thing he did do. He would pay what he owed and he
would give a receipt for everything, and he would give a receipt when you
did business with him. He was a business man , somehow or other.

i65

There are other virtues implied in his life which came closer to the
general community notions of respectability. “He died and left
his wife in good shape. Left her his home; left her not begging;
left her with something around her. She’s crying now but she ain’t
crying ’cause she ain’t got nothing to eat.” It was this thrust by
the preacher which brought the first response. The audience
quieted for a while as if stunned, and the preacher indulged in a
few easy personal reminiscences.

He always made me welcome in his home. He not only invited me
there to breakfast or dinner one time, but all the time whenever he would
see me he would ask me if I wouldn’t have something to eat with them.
He didn’t talk no foolishness, but he was a business colored man; he had
sho-enough visible long eyes.

Then, addressing the corpse, he said: “Jesse, we are going to talk
from the text we used to talk about. ‘For we know this is a build¬
ing of God not made with hands eternal in the heavens.’ ” At this
point the sermon was interrupted by the singing of an old hymn.
The widow arose and walked around the casket, waving her hand
in farewell at the remains and crying, “Goodbye, goodbye, I am
all by myself now; aint’ got nobody, Lord, nobody but me and
myself.” A friend came up and began fanning her. By the end of
the song the preacher had better command of himself, and
launched into his sermon, deliberately and with determination.

When we are about to build a house the architect makes out all the
plans and states the number of things it takes to go into the making of
this building. We go according to the directions that he gives us. Bad
disaster of a serious kind, rainstorms, and what not comes along and de¬
stroys it, and it goes back to the dust from whence it came. The upkeep
is always more expensive than the building. To build a building and not
have the upkeep is a waste of time, material, and money. Time after
time somebody had to go around to look after the building to keep it up.
Brother Harding had to go make preparations for another building.
When God created heaven and earth he had nothing to start with; he had
no material. He planted the world while the world was dark. He didn’t
have nobody to pull up by, nobody but himself. That is the kind of pro¬
tection Jesse had. When you got your hands in God’s hand you don’t
need to worry. In Indiana once I went down to visit a building that took
ninety-nine years to finish — just lack one year of taking a hundred years

166

to build. But that building is going to rot down; time is going to wear it
out. Storms and rains is going to tear it down after a while. Jesse’s
government sent him over in France. He got gassed and gas got all
through his body, but he done it for me and you. He is saying, “All you
can do for me, Mr. Hoover, now is give me a home over yonder. Got
to go back and have a home when the government done signed up. Gon¬
na need one after a while.”

The creation of the world by God out of nothing is one of the
most powerfully dramatic incidents in time and space. It provides
an opportunity for imagery of the most effective sort, and is col¬
ored with a deep and eternal mystery. It was this picturization
that the preacher resorted to by way of awakening his audience.

God talked, and one thousand birds came from nowhere. He talked
and the waters of the deep come gushing up. [/ got to hurry on now.]
Jesse begin to breathe the breath of life. When God breathe the breath
of life in you, you are going to know it. Noah built the ark, but I’m
talking about this house not made with hands. Old house built upon the
sand give away some time. You can’t live in a house when it gets too
shaky. Old disease got in Jesse’s house and he couldn’t live. Brother
Jesse’s heart can’t move no longer ’cause disease got in it. Mrs. Jesse
heard Jesse talking to someone but she couldn’t see who it was. God was
telling him to come on in. Jesse said, “Take me and keep me out of my
misery.” He was talking to someone but none could see who it was but
Jesse could see. When T.B. get into your body you can’t stand it. All
right, Jesse, all right, all right, boy, do the best you can; I ain’t gonna
cry no more. Don’t cry, everybody has done all they could. Jesse gone
and left us all. He said, “I am fixing for another world; the things of this
world won’t do me no good. I will meet you over yonder after a while.”
They tell me that if you believe in the word of God, he will save you in the
dying hour. When he was converted he asked what they meant when
they said, “Believe on God and keep his commandments.” Brother Tate
told him to just believe in the word of God, and trust him and turn loose
and a power from on high would do the rest. O man, O man, after a while
the old Kaiser said, “I believe I will go down here in France and play
the old devil with the young boys.” Jesse went over there with a bunch
of boys from here; some was with the mechanics and some was on the
firing line. The old Kaiser played the devil with our boys. I can imagine
I can hear Jesse praying to come back home. He didn’t have no wife
then. O Lord, O Lord, O, it got so dark then in France, they say one
time they was digging graves 138 hours, burying men who had fallen in

167

France. Brother Jesse didn’t happen to fall in that crowd, but he had to
stand in water up to his knees. He told me once he didn’t see how he got
that disease, and I told him that he brought it back from France; that he
caught it over there. I told him not only him but there was thousands
of other boys in the came condition. He went in there one evening and
got on the scales and he had lost seven or eight pounds, and the next week
they put him on the scales again and he had lost about eight and a half
pounds, and he said, “I can’t stay here long going away like this.” After
a while he got to meet that monster Death. At the hospital they weigh
you to see how you are getting along. All that is over with you now, boy.
You ain’t gonna stand in line no more. We won’t see him no more going
to see after the stock in the barn. O man, I will meet you after a while.
I fancy Jesse talking to his father, and him asking about all of the children
down here. O wife, you won’t have to walk around the bed giving him
medicine no more. O Lord, O Lord! O Jesus, take care of us! I imagine
I can see Jesse walking in Jerusalem just like John. Ain’t got on no sol¬
dier’s clothing, ain’t got on no gas mask; but he’s got on the helmet of
salvation, sitting around God’s throne.

The congregation was now partially aroused. They began hum¬
ming and moaning loud enough at times to cross the words of the
minister, but without force or spontaneity. “You all sing mighty
sorry,” the preacher chided. “You act like you can’t sing.” Then
noticing some of the members stealing out, he shouted: “Don’t
nobody go out. Don’t nobody go out over the corpse.” Another
song was started and four women accommodatingly shouted
“Lordy, Lordy” and ceased promptly with the music. Once more
the preacher attempted a figure: “Jesse, you are not over the
council of Daniel, of John, of Amos. We will meet again. We will
meet over yonder. Jesse’s wife comes first.” At mention of her
name, the wife began crying aloud again, “O Lord, I ain’t got
nobody; Lord, nobody but me now, Lord.”

The preacher observed, sadly:

Jesse can’t say nothing, Lord.

I imagine I can hear Amos and John say, “I wonder where my mother
is.” Jesse will see them soon, and say, “I’m troubled, Lord; I’m trou¬
bled.” Jesse ain’t going to cry no more; he ain’t going to tell me about
being motherless and fatherless. Don’t give up sisters, brothers, and
wife. Love each other and live at peace with one another. Amen.

Don’t nobody go out. The undertaker will tell you which way to

1 68

come up and see the body. This body has been embalmed so there ain’t
nothing to be afraid of. We got a little debt on the pump, so you all put
a nickel on the table as you pass to look at the body. Don’t talk. Pass
quietly, please. Don’t talk. Don’t go outdoors. Go out behind the body.

O Lordy, let your will be done.

Says, O Lordy, let your will be done.

If it takes my mother,

Let your will be done.

If it takes my mother,

Let your will be done.

O Lordy, let your will be done.

You all ain’t dropping no nickels on the table.

On the third Sunday our anniversary will be completed. Every mem¬
ber of this church ought to be registered. Seems like you all forgetting
to honor the older members of this church. Now listen here: Sister
Harding has lost her husband, and we realize that, and I want every
brother and sister to console her. Go and throw your arms about her and
help that wife and comfort her. Go over there tomorrow morning and

help her clean up everything . The family will go down the same

aisle they come up.

At the graveyard the Negro undertaker who had come up from
Montgomery was introducing a new device, an automatic lowering
apparatus. The pall-bearers were temporarily nonplused, and
were lost for something to do until they were permitted to fill in
the grave. The preacher sang, “I want to walk in Jerusalem just
like John,” and at the end of the song announced that he wanted
to take the occasion to speak of the fact that the funeral had been
conducted from the house to the grave by a “member of our race.”
He called the undertaker, who promptly stepped forward to ac¬
knowledge this recognition. Said the minister:

You can see for yourself he’s a shore-enough member of the race; he’s
like Brother Thomas over there and we all agree that he is real dark.

I want to remind you also how necessary it is to keep up insurances so
that you won’t be a burden on other people when you come down to die.

169

As the body was lowered into the grave a brother of the deceased
man leaned upon a woman mourner and wept aloud. Others
waved their hands at the corpse crying, “Goodbye.” A woman
standing back from the group of mourners screamed, “You said
you wanted rest and now you got rest.”

THE CHANGING CHURCH

The sixtieth anniversary of the Macedonia Baptist Church was
the occasion for a retrospective comparison of the church since slav¬
ery. Although not a regular service, it afforded interesting docu¬
mentation of the changing mores. There was a program with an¬
nounced papers, but the older members who took part in the
celebration simply accepted the stilted announcement of a paper
to be presented as an opportunity to talk. The minister had tried
hard to introduce a note of formality into the ceremonies, with
indifferent success. It was an artificial performance challenged by
one exasperated old member who frankly stated her fear of the
disintegration of the institution as a force in the life of the com¬
munity. She was realistic and accurate in her appraisal, which
provoked general irritation. The chairman made her sit down.

We are celebrating our sixtieth anniversary today . Don’t talk.

Some of you school girls back there are talking . We are celebrating.

. . . . We asked all of you ladies to dress in white. Some of you all had
old white dresses and some of you all coulda got them. Of course all
of them didn’t know about it is excused. All you members who wore
white dresses take the front seat. We going to be hard on them that
knowed and didn’t. You could take thirty cents and buy one. You can
make a dress out of three yards, and you can get goods for ten a yard.
. . . . All the members take the middle aisle. We are asking everybody
to write your name on an envelope. There will be a secretary to take it

’cause everybody can’t read everybody’s writing . Everybody

haven’t got sixty cents put in a quarter or dime, and if you ain’t got one
borrow one. We are going to be hard. We can’t whip you but we can
make you feel mighty bad.

We are going to have two subjects today. The first one is going to be
delivered by one I have known all my days. He’s been our superintend¬
ent of Sunday school for years. His subject is “Difference in Spiritual
Progress in the Church Now and Twenty-five Years Ago.”

170

The superintendent arose and put on his glasses to speak. He said:

I can’t say so much about the difference in the church twenty-five or
thirty years ago but I know it is a big difference. My mother used to
take me by the hand and lead me to church and Sunday school. They
used to have midweek meetings and Saturday-night meetings, and men
and women was converted by prayer meetings. We don’t take the time
now to have meetings like they used to have twenty-five or thirty years
ago. I believe, though, that times will be better to come. Used to be my
mother and your mother would start shouting soon as they got in the
door of the church. Now you might think it a little different, but we are
serving the same God today as we did thirty years ago. Everything in
the world has changed. In those days people had to go to the graveyard,
and ’less’n you told a great long tale about a dog or something else you
couldn’t be let in. We don’t do that now. We know that Jesus Christ is
right here and you can get him anywhere if you got the love of God in
your heart. Now let us try to serve God pure and honest; let us begin
singing, preaching, or whatever we do — serve him with a pure heart.

Lordy, won’t you hear me pray;

I want to be holy every day.

Lordy, won’t you hear me pray;

I want to be more holy every day.

The minister proceeded with the program:

Next subject on hand to be delivered [ under his breath he ?nuttered\
ain’t but one thing ’bout it he is able to do and I want to ask him to cut
it sorta short. His subject is: “My Vision of the Future Church,” by
Deacon A. M. Turner.

Deacon Turner strove to be correct in every detail:

Master of Ceremonies, Members, Pastor, and Friends: One way
we will have a future church will be the way we lead our lives daily and
give the folks what they need. I am not a preacher; I was only called to
be a deacon. Ain’t very much work I can do. I might say something
here he wouldn’t like, yet he and I work together; if we fall out nobody
won’t know it but us. Every church that ever been organized or come
up rested on that Book there. If we ever be anything in the future we
got to come out to church; that is our only hope. People that got chil¬
dren ought to bring them to the Sabbath school or send them. When you
fail to bring your child up in the Sunday school you have just failed.
Train your child in the way you would have it to go; when it get old it
won’t depart from you. Young people is our only hope. You try to break
a old dried-up stick and it will break every time. I am scared of the man

or woman who won’t let their children be brought up in the Sunday
school. I mean from the Deacon Board on down. You can’t just turn
them loose. If we never have no prayer service here we don’t know
whether our boys can sing or not. We got to quit so much frolicking.
Your son and daughter gonna do and say just what you do. You want
your child to be able to say, “I want to be like mother or father.” Our
only hope is to bring them to the Sabbath school, have prayer services
so that child will be able to take care of the future church.

Look ’way down that lonesome road,

Look ’way down that lonesome road.

I see trouble down that road,

I see trouble down that road.

Lord been here and blessed my soul,

Lord been here and blessed my soul.

I ain’t gonna lay my religion down,

I ain’t gonna lay my religion down.

Look ’way down that lonesome road.

Look ’way down that lonesome road,

Look ’way down that lonesome road.

Amen, Amen.

At this point one of the older members of the church, a woman,
got up and began talking, even though she was not on the program.
“The future church gonna be worser than that what is past. Now
all the chillun think ’bout learning is the ‘black bottom’ and all
other devilment.” The master of ceremonies began to ring the
bell for her to sit down, but she was indifferent to it.

We was scared to do anything. Just much difference in Sunday school
now and then as day and night. Everybody is learning things now what
they ain’t got no business. They won’t even go to school. I am the
mother of this church, and I will say what I please. This is my old stand
and I’ll say what I please. Boy come long and say he believe the Lord
done pardoned his sins and if you don’t watch him he will be back in
thirty days saying he needs ’ligion. If you don’t change the church' is
lost. Listen, I’m gonna talk but I ain’t gonna say nothing out of school.
They must be educated in the heart first. Look up and love God in his
heart. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things will
be added.” You got to move, you can’t do nothing with a educated heart
only, you got to be educated in your hands next, then you must be edu-

172

cated in your feet and in your eyes. That’s what it takes for the future
church.

The master of ceremonies began tapping the bell with force, and
continued until she finally sat down. He said in apology:

Brothers, I know you all honor Sister Moore. Course our time is short
but she has acted as a mother to me when I used to go to school here.
Any time old folks get up I give way to them. I’m ’fraid of old folks till
today. If we had space we would have some more. I am satisfied our
boys can put it over.

The chief sermon was to be delivered by the pastor. He came
forward bustling and earnest giving orders to the congregation
between the lines of the introduction to the sermon.

My friends, we are happy to be here. Come on to the front, ladies.
You all must take turn about and help find these ladies seats, and you
all must help keep order. Now we are praising God today and in our
praises don’t forget the sixty years God has been with us. I must men¬
tion here, before I forget it, that Brother Boyd has asked for our
prayers, and when you all pass there go and ask how he is getting along,
but don’t go in and talk to him for he is mighty sick and don’t have
strength to talk. Come right on down to the front, ladies. Bring them
right on down this way, brother. Make believe you love them; that’s the
way to do. When you go to First Baptist they always make you welcome,
and they make you feel at home. I am glad to have our members and
friends here, and I wish we had time to hear them all. Ladies are not
wearing the short dresses now and they can take the front seats. Thank
the Lord they are letting them down and they won’t have to be ashamed
to take the front seats. Don’t talk, don’t talk, please.

There is quite a change in now and years ago. There is quite a change
in everything. I want my son to be a partner with me. I want to take
him along by my side and let him tell me what he thinks. When you
knock them down now you may not get off so light. You know folks
used to knock and beat their children around, but you can’t do it so
well now. Our old folks got afraid from slavery. I want my boy to talk
to me and not feel like he is afraid of me. He talked to me not long ago.
He said, “Papa, I believe the Lord got something to do with this thing.”
He wanted a job and couldn’t get it, and wanted a new suit; that was why
he was talking so to me. Whatever my business may be I want my son
to know about it. If I got a dollar I want him to have one, but let him
work for it, and get it like I did. A man that haven’t got a dollar and

!73

can’t get one ain’t much of a man. It takes a hustler to get one. If I
couldn’t get a dollar I would go to Europe or somewhere else and get
one. I ain’t gonna stay no where I can’t get a dollar. Some of us ain’t
got nothing and don’t want nothing. When he gets to the place where he
doesn’t want nothing he is in a bad fix.

I want to preach thirty minutes, and want to be through in that time.
I believe I want to hear you all sing a verse, just a verse:

I heard the voice of Jesus saying,

“Come unto me and rest.

Lie down, thy weary one, lie down,

Thy head upon my breast.”

1 been here twenty years, going on twenty-one, and I never smelt a
drop of whiskey on one of my deacons’ breath, and they ain’t never
offered me one. I ain’t never told them to tell a woman no secret and
they ain’t never told me one. If they ever had any bad tricks they never
told me. We have been straight and fair with each other these twenty-
one years. You ought to say “Amen.” They treat me with the highest
respect; yes, they have. They must be all right, ain’t they? I am going
to give them credit.

The text I am gonna take is just two sentences. The first is “I have
fought a good fight”; second, “I have kept the faith.”

I have fought a good fight; I have kept the faith. The Scripture desig¬
nates just as our leader, as our captain of soldiers; before a man or wom¬
an can make a good soldier he must realize that life in this battle cannot
be lost; he must believe that he is gonna win. We lost soldiers in France
but the United States conquered. Jesus Christ died but he brought life
by dying. Some people think the church is something to be played with.
A man goes out on the battlefield and goes out there to win. It takes a
brave person to be a good soldier. That is why they give so much praise
to the man who volunteers to go to the army. We had boys in the last
war to volunteer; and that’s what we want in the church. I am ready to
serve, not have to persuade folks to do anything. That’s the kind of re¬
ligion we ought to have. I never give a dime for a man who never do
nothing in the church. A man that won’t do nothing in the church ain’t
much to him. You say “Amen” mighty dry. Any man that won’t serve
needs a changed heart. When a man’s heart is changed he is willing to
serve. You don’t have to ask if he belongs to church; you know it by how
he goes about his work.

Any attack on the traditional ways is hazardous, and this minis¬
ter approached the issue with some misgivings.

W 4

You can’t hardly change an old man from his ways; he is stubborn as
the devil. You can change young folks. An old man is set in his ways.
Brother, I am preaching now; you all better say “Amen.” I been talking
this way for twenty years and I ain’t been put out yet. They might cuss
me out, but they ain’t put me out. I will be like the monkey — “ain’t
gwine nowhere.” I’m telling you now I ain’t gwine nowhere. Get this
rich thought I am giving you this morning. It isn’t money — any fool
know money will last only a short time. In his soul religion ought to be
the strongest thing. Get love in your hearts. Wake up, Brother Swenny,
you know you can’t sleep over me. You got to go somewhere else to sleep,
’cause I’m gonna wake you up. A man who can serve and won’t serve
just needs to be born again, that’s all.

The illuminating byways of the sermon illustrate the manner in
which new ideas enter. He is bringing to them new ideas about
education, consolidation of effort for efficiency, race spirit, and he
is well aware that his high mission of instruction is encountering
the doubt and dismal conversation of the group.

We don’t want no deacons on the board who won’t serve. I am think¬
ing the time is gonna come when these churches have got to double up.
Ain’t no need of all these churches around here. Railroads are going to¬
gether and banks are going together. A colored man don’t like to think; a
white man thinks in terms of millions; not only the white man but the
intelligent Negro. You just as well get ready to think. You fool around
and don’t educate your girls and boys, but he got to pay for it. I had
rather be dead and in my grave than have my children come up ignorant.
If I had a child and couldn’t school him, I had rather go somewhere and
fight. Some of you say you can’t do without them, but you would do
without them if they would die. You can get along without them all
right if you just try sending them away to school. O Lord, everything is
all right, ain’t it? I know you all don’t like it, but I don’t care if you
don’t. Don’t talk, don’t talk. Christ shed much blood and had great
suffering. You all haven’t suffered. You are getting along fine. A man
that is a good Christian don’t have a hard time. I tell you, my friends,
we can say I have fought a good fight and I have kept the faith. Let us
go on. I told you the church back yonder had to face a terrible crisis but
we have to die to conquer. What does it mean to die? If a man got to die
to win, let him die. The boys over in France brought the bacon home
and Uncle Sam is doing what he can for them now. Our girls have got
to have courage to go on. Matthew was put to death by the point of a
sword; next Mark was tied to a wild beast and drug through the streets

I7S

of Alexander. Preachers used to wear long-tailcoats and beaver hats,
but now they wear whatever they want. I am going to wear the kind of
hat and shoes, too, I want to wear. There ain’t no need to be dead. I
wouldn’t give a dime for a teacher who come to class all drawn and dead.
We want plenty of pep in them. I believe that teachers who teach our
children ought to be Christians. I believe a man teaching Sunday school
ought to be a Christian and a man teaching psychology or anything else
ought to be a Christian. About sixty-some-odd years ago we didn’t have
teachers like we do now. You folks back there will have to be still and
quit getting up and going out . I can’t preach with all that noise.

James was crucified with his heels up and head down. Luke was
hanged to an olive tree. You can’t mean much unless you suffer for the
church. We have as much devilment as white folks; it’s tit for tat. I have
often heard it said, “Be careful how you promote a colored man, because
after you promote him he goes crazy.” He got crazy ’bout automobiles
but he done quit; now they all standing under sheds. You used to be
able to hear a “chuck, chuck, chuck” everywhere. But they are driving
wagons now. Every man that don’t volunteer in the army ain’t a coward,
but if he enters he can be helped and can be made strong where he is
weak. I am preaching now; you ought to be up shouting. My daddy was
a soldier in the Revolutionary [Confederate] Army. As long as the drums
tapped he was encouraged to go. You can say, “I will love Jesus”;
you ought to be encouraged to go on. There is somebody crying for the
word of God; you ought to be willing to go.

I have fought a good fight. I am nearly through, my friends. Be a
soldier in the army. Well, what you gonna fight this army with? Prayer
is the first weapon; a man that won’t pray won’t make a good soldier.
The man who won’t love the church is not a good soldier. A man that is
born again will be brave; a man can’t mean much in the army if he ain’t
got that weapon. I don’t care what you do, but pray. God Almighty
will hear your prayers if you just call him right. Joshua was in a mighty
battle and he called on God, and he reached out his mighty hand and
stopped the sun . Wake up, sister!

My friends, by faith the children walked down in the Red Sea on dry
ground. Any man won’t hear him ain’t got faith. God called Abraham
to offer his son Isaac on the altar as a sacrifice. He just went right on and
obeyed God. He told his son to get ready to go on over to the mountain.
He was obeying God. My friends, don’t set down; go to work and God
will make you well. You quarrel about what you can’t do; nothing is
impossible with God. Get prepared. When Abraham was about to kill
his son God sent a message to him not to strike. God can do anything.
Adam just done what God told him not to do. After a while, my friends,

176

God will come back. I want to ride up one of these mornings; I want to
say I’ve kept the faith. I wonder if the church will meet me on that morn¬
ing? Since that time sixty years ago somebody has said, “I have kept
the faith.” I got a mother over yonder, and I hope to meet her some day.

Father, I stretch my hands to Thee,

No other help I know, etc.

There began a low moaning all over the church at this point,
and it was impossible to hear everything the preacher was saying
at the time; but it lasted only a few minutes.

We thank thee, our Heavenly Father, for sparing us. We are glad to
meet at church one more time again on this side of death. Many who
started with us is deprived of this privilege of being here this morning.
You being God, you know the secret of every man and woman’s heart.
We know that you know all about us, Heavenly Father. You know every
turn we make and kept our bed from being a cooling-board this morning,
and we was able to look upon a day that we never will forget as long as we
live. We have kept our feet in the paths of righteousness. I once was
lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. Bless the people of this
congregation. When we stack up our books and Bible; got to stoop down
and unlace our shoes, take us home in thy Kingdom, for Christ’s sake.
Amen.

What kind shoes I’m gonna wear? Golden slippers.

Golden slippers I’m bound to wear.

Yes, yes, yes, my Lord, I’m a soldier of the cross.

Yes, yes, yes, my Lord, I’m a soldier of the cross. [Repeat.]

What kind crown I’m gonna wear? Starry crown.

Starry crown I’m bound to wear.

Yes, yes, yes, my Lord, I’m a soldier of the cross.

Yes, yes, yes, my Lord, I’m a soldier of the cross. [Repeat. ]

Now we are going to open the doors of the church. If anyone like to
join the church, come right on up.

This heart of mine, this heart of mine,

When Jesus fixed, when Jesus fixed this heart of mine.

One day, one day I was walking along

When Jesus fixed, when Jesus fixed this heart of mine.

All night long, down on my knees,

When Jesus fixed, when Jesus fixed this heart of mine.

I haven’t got time to tell you what I want to tell you; seem like you all
are in a hurry. I hope the rain will run you all back in. Don’t nobody
leave till we show them what Macedonia folks can do.

The connection between the ceremonial function of the church
and the basic religious sentiments of the people is not clear. Nor
is it apparent how closely these religious sentiments apart from the
church are related to individual social conduct. Not all religious
sentiment was related to the church, and not all reactive church
members gave expression to religious sentiments. A woman who
felt a friendlessness for which the social church was responsible
could say: “I ain’t got nobody, nobody but Jesus. I know I got
Jesus.” A man who acknowledged profound belief in God said:
“But I ain’t got time to be going to all these here church proces¬
sions.” There is, moreover, a pervasive skepticism of the pretens-
iveness of the church which has little relation to religion.

They turn you out sometimes for playing ball. They don’t want you
to play cards either. They don’t want you to do nothing but work and
give them money to set down on in this county.

The church don’t give you nothing; but they rob you, though. They
come after every chicken you got.

There were persons who disliked the church, and those who
merely disregarded all its attempted regulations, but nowhere was
there observed anything approaching religious skepticism. Im¬
perfect understanding of the Bible extended at times to the lu¬
dicrous, as, for example, in the serious expostulation of one man:
“Cain found his wife in the land of Nod, and she was a monkey.”
The dominant attitude was one of unquestioning belief in and re¬
reliance upon God as a protection against everything that was
feared, and an answer to everything that could not be understood.

In so simple a society the range of the unknown fell far into the
field of ordinary experience. Just as God brought droughts, rain,
pestilence, disease for a purpose both local and inscrutable, there
was no appeal from his elections, whether with respect to the inci¬
dence of contagion or the exigencies of the cotton crop. All is
mystery colored by a faith and fatalism which tended to dull both
striving and desire. The conventional response to a death in the

178

family, to the acuteness of hard times, to tragedy, and to the
prospect of personal death and damnation is “seeking.” And such
seeking partakes of all the fears which make up life. It probably
accounts for the frequent “visions” and dreams so colored by the
workaday world, and for the ecstasies of the release. It seems just
as true of the religious experiences of this group as of other simi¬
larly na’ive Negro groups of which it has been observed that they
were not converted to God, but converted God to themselves.

J79

PLAY LIFE

The deadening routine of the daily labor and the seasonal stress
in farming lend high importance to the leisure time. There are
few who do not in course of the year have periods free from work.
The community had provided for itself certain forms of diversion,
as follows:

The Church

Regular Sunday services, camp meetings and revivals, funerals,
wakes, prayer meetings, are definite recreations, particularly for
the older people. These pleasures are occasionally combined with
more secular fun: “Church is all the entertainment I has; every
meeting Sunday”; “I go to church jest a little; hunting is ’ginst
the law.”

The Saturday Trip to Town

This is the occasion for a good time. It is sometimes combined
with a certain amount of marketing. Old friends meet in town,
gossip, eat peanuts, and drink soda pop and not infrequently corn
whiskey, shop about, and, if they have any money, buy things for
the family. There is a moving-picture show for Negroes in Tuske-
gee which some of them attend. Once a month is the usual fre¬
quency of visits of this sort. It sometimes affords recreation for
older men to go down to the country store, or to the highway, or to
the small railway station, to sit and talk, on the chance of some
excitement.

Sports

There are notable conflicts in the community with respect to cer¬
tain sports. The most common diversions like ball-playing, frolics,

180

THE YOUNG PEOPLE GO TO TOWN

■

and cards, being under the ban of the church, can be indulged in
only by defying the regulations of the community’s strongest in¬
stitution. This happens, nevertheless, on a large scale. The Satur¬
day ball game during the summer is one of the most popular di¬
versions. Next in importance is fishing. Men and women, young
and old, find this a sport both pleasant and useful since it also
provides a meal for the family. Fishing, however, has been con¬
demned as a lazy man’s sport and likewise requires a license. Still
another form of recreation is hunting. This could be as useful as
fishing, but hunting comes under the regulation of the state.
There is a hunting season and the requirement of a license. The
possession of guns by the Negroes is not looked upon favorably by
the white community. As a result, most of the hunting is done
covertly. The people are aware of the law, but violate it occasion¬
ally, as much for food as for sport. “I had ‘chicken’ for supper
today. I have to call it ‘chicken’ ’cause it’s ’g’inst the law to hunt
rabbits now.”

Church Suppers

Church suppers are both the answer of the church to the secular
parties and a means of indirect taxation of members. A favorite
form of entertainment is the box supper and picnic, in which each
family brings its own basic food while they purchase lighter re¬
freshments; and the old folks’ parties — “tackie parties,” they are
sometimes called — where the fun consists in seeing how ludicrously
one can dress himself. “The folks all dress up and looks ugly,
puts moss all on they heads and paint they faces, and then charge
five cents for you to come up and look. That’s how I raised three
dollars for my church last year. I put on the concert all by
myself.” These parties, however, have taken on many of the fea¬
tures of a secular frolic, and older members have been discouraged
from attending, quite as much out of fear of getting hurt as of
dissatisfaction with the secular trend of the proceedings.

The Frolic

This is the great feature of the rural recreation. These affairs
begin as dances where refreshments are sold and wind up, fre-

1 8 1

quently, in the most wanton merrymaking. In this respect they
are characteristic of all peasant merrymaking, a reaction to, and
escape from, the other extreme of their life-cycle. The frolics and
“parties,” held on Saturday nights, were mentioned by practically
all the younger members of the community. The churches in¬
veighed against them as an incident of the evil of dancing. They
are held from house to house; there is usually an abundance of
corn whiskey available, and they not infrequently end in violence.
The houses are small and ill lighted and couples make little secret
of the character and intensity of their love-making under the wide-
flung blanket of darkness. One old woman referred thus to these
affairs: “Now my son, he has lots of entertainment. He goes to all
dem dances on Saturday nights. I ain’t feeling so favorable to
that. Dere’s so much cutting and killing going on, but he’s got to
look out for hisself now; he’s a man like everybody else, I ’spects.”
Church members are not expected to attend these affairs on penal¬
ty of expulsion, but many of them do, and in listing their recrea¬
tions included frolics along with the church.

The murder of the young woman at one of the frolics, which was
mentioned during the early period of this study, was not wholly
surprising. At that affair the drinking had reached the point of an
orgy. “They was all so drunk they spit all on the bed. Then they

got tired and run around spitting up and down the mantel .

What I likes most is to drink a little corn but you can’t find none
now. The sheriff’s been here so much folks is scared to keep it, but
they brings it up from Montgomery.”

There was, occasionally, the franker listing by individual men
of sexual intercourse as their relaxation. Two unmarried women
said that they liked to “pleasure themselves with men” when they
were not too tired. A more polite way of referring to this form of
entertainment by men was “setting around playing with womens.”

Aside from the conventional outlets there are other means of
using leisure time which, while perhaps less harmful than the frol¬
ics and parties, yet contributed little to the cultural development
of the community. There is practically no reading and no con¬
certs or lectures, apart from those offered in connection with church

182

programs. Those who do not like what is offered by the commu¬
nity may “piddle around the house,” “set on the porch and rock,”
“lay down and sleep,” “wallow around the house,” “play with the
cat,” “walk about and visit,” or “jest set down.”

The winter period, which is free from active outside farming,
offers miscellaneous duties for the men: chopping wood and “fix¬
ing things.” The women sew and quilt, and this is sometimes listed
as recreation. Changes in the material culture of the community
have brought new, though somewhat limited, forms of diversion.
One of these is automobile riding. A few families possessed auto¬
mobiles, but joy rides, interestingly enough, encountered conserva¬
tive opposition on the part of the community. Men objected to
having their women ride in automobiles and quite serious results
have followed the indulgence.

Lodges and Societies

The tradition of the burial society hangs on in the mutual or¬
ganization which, though concerned chiefly with death benefits,
build up and hold their membership on the strength of the social
features. In a situation under which families were losing such in¬
surance as they had, the burial societies were gaining in strength.4

I belong to the Burial Union. That ain’t the same as the Union Aid.
We pays only when a member dies. We got ’bout 400 members and each
pay 20 cents. I’m carrying a Burial Union and when I die the money
goes to whoever I willed it to. We have several branches in different
locations, one in Liverpool, one in Hardaway, and one in Shady Grove.
The difference in this and the Union Aid, it pays when you’re sick and
you pays every month. Ours is a co-operative business. The nation is
too divided now and we people is trying to get together. We come to¬
gether every month for a meeting.

Some of the insurance companies operating in the neighborhood
have adjusted their methods to community habits, and instead of
collectors they attempt to organize the people into lodges. Of
these there is a considerable variety, from the “Love and Do

4 There were 224 of the 612 families who now have, or have had, insurance, and 170 of
these paid premiums of 25 cents a week or less. Twenty-one companies and lodges were
represented in these numbers.

i83

Wells” to the “Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise.” There has
been a loss of confidence in most of these recently, owing to fre¬
quent financial failures, the inability to meet sickness and death
payments, and the widespread exploitation by both whites and
Negroes from the outside. One man said: “I was in the American

- — and the American - . It went down. When they first

come around they made out like it was colored but we found out it
was white. I had paid about $15 in it when it went down.” A
woman gave a similar experience: “I couldn’t tell you how much
money I didn’t lose in dese societies. Paid whole lot a money and
de society break down.”

Mother: I put ’bout $5°° in dem; I can’t tell ’xactly how much, but
I wisht I had it.

Another person said:

Yes, we lost money in the American - . All three of us were in

there for over five years. He had to pay $1.10 a month and $1.00 each
for me and grandmother. The next year it was raised to $1.20 a month
each. They just kept raising on us so we got out, and it soon went down
here. They claim to be colored but I thinks it’s white. After we got out
they decided they couldn’t carry us less we reinstate and we all decided
to stop. We tried to get our money back, but they said we’d have to see
the deputy that set me up, and he was dead then.

Actually these companies were at times within the law in their
refusal to pay certain benefits, but it was as hard to convince their
policyholders that they were within their rights in refusing pay¬
ment as it was easy to sell them a policy which they could not read
and which actually promised them nothing. Some of the stipula¬
tions made it impossible to pay unless there was illness or death
from diseases which were as rare in Macon County as Asiatic
cholera.

There are no radios, but 76 families had victrolas, bought on the
instalment plan from agents in the community. There was but
one banjo in the entire 612 families. This musical instrument is
never so invariably associated with the Negro in actual life as it is
on the stage. There were twenty-one organs and three pianos in

184

the families, and most of these were out of repair; but playing
provided some amusement. Both the organs and the pianos were
in the homes of owners.

There is being introduced, with some prospect of better control,
a new form of recreation centering around the schools, where these
are at all active. School closings with commencements, school
parties, and festivals offer perhaps the most wholesome forms of
recreation now obtainable in the community for children and
adults.

185

Chapter VII

MACON COUNTY ranked third in Negro mortality in a list
of 67 rural Alabama counties, according to the 1929 mor¬
tality census. There were 406 deaths and these gave a rate of 18.4.
This rate was exactly the same as that for the white population
in this county. There is, however, something unexplained about
the figures. Just one year before the Negro mortality was 22.1 and
in 1925 it was 22.2 and second highest in the state. The ratio be¬
tween white and Negro deaths has remained approximately the
same, and the mortality of the white population of this county has
exceeded that of Negroes in the majority of counties of the state.
This may indeed be a reflection of the hard life of the northern
section of the county where most of the white residents live (in the
shadow of their own past).

One of the unexplained circumstances in the number of Negro
deaths for 1929 may possibly be connected with the discrepancy
between the numbers of Negroes dying as reported by the federal
census, on the one hand, and the county health officer, on the
other. The records of the latter show 60 white and 154 Negro
death certificates while the census shows 87 whites and 406 Ne¬
groes, residents and nonresidents. This would presumably include
deaths at the Negro Veterans Hospital located in the county near
Tuskegee. During the same year 119 white and 574 Negro babies
were added to the population. The white population, thus, it
seems, had 98 per cent more birth survivals than deaths and the
Negroes about 3.6 per cent more. The extent to which the lower
Negro rates of survival are related to inadequate birth registration
is not evident in the figures alone, nor does the county health

186

officer know what proportion of the total was registered. There
is some evidence that the number of Negro births registered is less
than the actual number of births. In our 612 families, which might
be taken as an average, there were 69 children under one year of
age. These were 2.7 of the total population. If this rate may be
assumed for the entire population, it would be expected that 600
of the children born during a given twelve months’ period would
be alive. Such an estimate, however, would not take into account
those who were born and died during the first few months of the
year. If these were included it would point to a somewhat greater
discrepancy. Since the fecundity rate is known to be high, a situa¬
tion exists which emphasizes the high infant mortality rate as well
as the rate for stillbirths and nonviable abortions.

In order of numerical importance the chief causes of death, as
listed by the county health officer, were violence, heart disease,
stillbirths, tuberculosis, influenza, nephritis, cancer, pellagra, and
malaria. The distribution is unusual. Little confidence can be
placed in the figures available on this mortality. In the first place,
diseases are not adequately diagnosed because of the uncertain
relation of doctors to sick persons, the rather general ignorance of
disease, the reliance upon folk diagnosis and cures, and the exceed¬
ingly high rate of venereal infection in the population. The rela¬
tive inaccessibility of many of the families leaves them very largely
to the informal agencies of the community for handling both sick¬
ness and death. When violence is responsible for death it becomes
a matter of both health and crime registration, and the state steps
in with considerably more determination and insists on greater
accuracy in the record.

The only index to sickness among the families studied was the
non-technical one of persons being treated for malaria, pellagra,
and syphilis, the latter under a special demonstration instituted
as an experiment by the Rosenwald Fund. The county health
service provided some mass treatment for persons with malaria.
In 100 of the 612 families, or 16.3 per cent, all members of the
family had been treated for malaria; in 194, or 31.6 per cent of the
families, one or both of the parents had been treated; and in 50

187

more families, or about 5 per cent of them, some of the children
and one or both parents had been treated. Twenty-eight of the
families, or 4 per cent, reported that some of the children had been
treated. In 212 families, or 43.6 per cent, there was no record of
treatment for malaria. This does not measure the extent of mala¬
rial infection. Pellagra is similarly a common malady as indi¬
cated by the scaly, cracking skins, but there was no medical ap¬
praisal of the extent, since this would have required professional
examination. Forty-one families were receiving, or had received,
some treatment for pellagra. With respect to syphilis, however,
the opportunity for determining the extent was unparalleled for
studies of this type.

The Julius Rosenwald Fund, in co-operation with the United
States Public Health Service, had undertaken a study of the prev¬
alence of syphilis among Negroes in selected areas of the South.
The health officers of six southern states were brought in co-opera¬
tion with the Fund, through the Public Health Service and dem¬
onstrations were set up in six areas. The purpose of the demon¬
stration was to provide a basis for determining the practicability
and effectiveness of measures for the mass control of syphilis.
Macon County was selected as one of these areas because of the
proximity of Tuskegee Institute, the John A. Andrews Hospital,
and the United States War Veterans Hospital, and because the
administrative controls of the county and state, particularly in the
health and welfare divisions, were co-operative. A thorough cam¬
paign was made to include as large a number of families as possible
within a limited section of the county, in examinations which in¬
cluded Wassermann tests. All ages of both sexes were examined,
and as many treated as would accept. The results of the medical
examinations provide perhaps one of the most complete samples of
a total population anywhere available. In this county 3,684
Wassermanns were taken, of which 1,474, or 35 per cent, were
positive. This rate, incidentally, was the highest of the six demon¬
strations. A county in Georgia stood next with 26 per cent, on the
basis of 5,775 tests; a county in Mississippi was next in order with
20 per cent on 9,753 tests; a county in North Carolina ranked

188

fourth with only 12 per cent positives on a basis of 10,196 examina¬
tions. The average for the 30,000 serological examinations was 20
per cent positives.

In Macon County the large number of positive Wassermanns
for children pointed to heridito-syphilis. The large number of posi¬
tive reactions in men and women of advanced ages presented a
problem for the medical men, since it is usually expected that the
disease would have manifested itself in the advanced ages in other
and more violent results.

The highest positive rates for men were found in the age group
twenty-five to twenty-nine, with 32 per cent of their cases, and the
women in the age group twenty to twenty-four, with 34 per cent
of the cases.

Most of these families were not burdened by defectives so far as
it was possible to ascertain. In 588 families, or 96 per cent of the
total, there were no defectives. There was a blind child in 2 of the
families. Two families had what appeared to be an imbecile, and
5 families had a person subject to “spells.” A crippled person was
found in 13 families, while 1 family had a ten-year-old child that
had been crippled and an imbecile because of infantile paralysis
since he was two or three years old.

The number of stillbirths and miscarriages in these families also
served as an index to the health of the people in these communities.
In the 612 families there were 490 known stillbirths. Less than half
of the wives were responsible for the 490 stillbirths and miscar¬
riages. There were 368 families in which none was reported.

To understand the somewhat unusual incidence of certain dis¬
eases and causes of death it is necessary to go back again to the
life of the families.

Violent Deaths

There is a tradition of violence which seems to mark personal
relations to a high degree. Although strictly speaking not a mat¬
ter of health, reference to the setting in which these violent deaths
take place is important as a phase of the social life as well as the
mortality. They include accidents of various sorts as well as homi-

189

cides. The violence of life was an inescapable fact in a large num¬
ber of families of the county. In another connection reference has
been made to the violence attending jealousy in sex relations, but
violence is not confined to love affairs. The large amount resulting
in death in this group of 612 families may be considered simply
another index to its cultural status. A woman who was asked
about sleeping with her windows open replied that “people do’s so
much killin’ round here, I’se scared to leave ’em open.” Another,
referring to their recreation, explained why they stopped attending
the dances: “Dere’s so much cutting and killing going on.” One
notes either casualness or fatalism in recounting deaths in the
family by violence.

My little grandchild what dead got a grain of corn down her throat, I
think. She was shelling corn when she started coughing and she look
jest like she had whooping cough, and never did get well. My other boy
got kilt. He was jest stabbed to death. Oh, they sent the boy what done
it to the reformatory.

Flaying with Weapons

My brother wuz killed accidentally by his wife. He had gone to see
’bout my oldest sister who had gone crazy. He took my brother-in-law’s
automatic pistol back to Birmingham with him ’cause he was ’fraid my
sister would get holt to it and hurt somebody. He had promised to teach
his wife to shoot it, so one mornin’ he was learnin’ her. He took all the
cartridges out and give it to her to shoot but he had left one in. He didn’t
know one wuz in the barrel. She took the pistol and ’cose she wuz scared
to shoot it, and she throw her head on the side and her hand out and shot
it and it hit my brother right in the head.

Juvenile Murders

My brother got killed out there by the creek. He was coming home
from a ball game one evening and two boys grabbed him. I spose they
got to fussing and the boys got mad and kilt him. We found him dead

over there. They caught the boys . One was a little boy ’bout

twelve. They sent him to the ’formatory. The other one they sent to the
mines for seven years.

Absent Sons

My boy got killed in Birmingham. They say he got shot — I don’ know.

190

A White Gentleman Shot Him

My boy dead now. A white gentleman shot him. He went to his house
to see his sister working there, and the gentleman told him to stay ’way.
’Twas his fault, I reckon. The man said, “Stay ’way.”

A Baseball Bat

Our preacher’s brother just got killed. He was at a ball game and a
boy was batting and instead of hitting the ball he turned the bat loose
and it went and struck him. The boy batting musta had something in
him [corn whiskey].

All of this suggests the rough-handed closeness of a frontier
community before adequate control of personal relations have
been developed. There is the significant difference that social con¬
trol in this community is related only vaguely to law. The courts
are outside of the scheme of life; adjustment of relations in the
past has been very largely the province of the white planter. Such
unanimity of sentiment on law as exists is a common disposition
to remain as far as possible out of contact with the courts whether
as plaintiff or accused. Where these traditional forms of control
over all phases of Negro social life by the white proprietor are
weakening, as is apparent in the younger generation, or where
there are no protectors available, the adjustment of disputes be¬
comes a matter of the individuals involved. Instead of providing
security as the arbitrator of personal differences, the courts are an
institution to be feared, a medium through which justice is to be
secured only by recourse to some individual white protector.
Thus, differences tend to be settled on a personal and face-to-face
basis. This sentiment helps further to account for the prevalence
of weapons of defense.

One of the most frequently asserted evidences of respectability
is that “we ain’t been in no trouble yet.” It is sufficiently difficult
to avoid, in the community setting, to make avoidance a virtue.

Woofter reports an interesting situation among St. Helena
Negroes, who live relatively isolated but very largely under their
own social controls. There is similar attitude toward the “law,”
which they refer as to “the unjust law,” in contradistinction to

191

their own extra-legal machinery centered largely in the church.
The local magistrates, recognizing this, encourage settlements
through their own agencies. Cases of violence are thus very often
avoided. A consequence is that there is very little crime and ex¬
tremely few civil suits. Out of a population of about five thousand
there were only about thirty-five cases annually brought before
the local magistrate and most of these were cases of nonresidents.

Folk Knowledge of Disease

Except on the basis of a general health examination it would be
impossible to estimate the extent of sickness from various diseases.
Complaints are generalized into merely “feelin’ kinda poorly” or
“I ain’t no good,” and generalized complaints call for the general¬
ized measures of patent medicines, or home herb remedies. “Black
Draught,” “666,” salts, and castor oil make up a large part of the
treatment of disease. Other standard remedies are “White Won¬
der Salve,” calomel, and quinine.

Unless there is some folk pattern of treatment, death may result
from sickness which in all probability could be avoided or intelli¬
gently treated. As one illiterate mother stated: “I had one child
to die v/hen it was just three days old, but I ain’t never knowed
what the trouble was. It just cried an’ cried for three days and
nights and then died.”

Children die in great numbers and mothers accept their death
with a dull and uninquiring fatalism. Some of the expressions
back of the infant mortality rates are thus most casual and unin¬
formed: The mother of eleven children sighed when she recalled
“I don’ had lots of chillun to die. I don’t know what ailed them.”
Another, referring to her stillbirths, said, “I birthed eleven chillun.
I got two living, six was born dead, and three lived a little while.
That boy that died when he was three days old bled to death at
the navel.”

All that another mother knew about her infant’s death was that
“he just keep on spitting up blood and then died.” “The granny”
explained that “strainers” [meaning constipation] killed one in¬
fant, and eating too much dirt while carrying twins killed both of

192

them for another of her patients. Then came this accident, which
left a heavy memory for the mother:

I was washing and my little baby asked for some water. I said, “Wait,
honey; mammy busy,” and I plumb forgot him till he scream. He done
drunk my lye. He die so pitiful and hard I wisht I’da stop and give him
a drink.

By some good fortune there are those who survive serious attacks
without the aid of physicians. A man and his wife, aged fifty-three
and forty-six respectively, live alone and pay $65 for rent of their
farm. One daughter of the husband died of tuberculosis. The hus¬
band said:

Don’t ask me if we’ve been sick; that’s all we bees. Last year I paid
nigh over one hundred dollars for my sickness alone, and then my old
lady there she’s all time sick. Got so once we thought we was losing her
for fair. All one side was paralyzed. She didn’t speak for twenty-four
hours. All the church folks come. Some give money, some give food,
and she just lay there and hold ’em. Didn’t know who gie’d ’em. She
don’t know yet. Well, I got busy. God and myself worked, rubbed, and
twisted her till she finally come ’round. I tell you I believe in the Lord.

He just didn’t mean for me to lose her . I has all kinds of trouble

with my stomach. That’s why I’m sick.

The following is an account of one woman’s “miseries” as she
described them. She had been sick for three years.

I was in the field plowing one day and I felt something jerkin’ my
head around. Then I tried to spit and I couldn’t. I said to my sister,
“Can yo spit?” And she did, but I couldn’t. I been sick and not able to
work for three years. I has miseries in my stomach.

Indigestion (“indijestus”) is a frequent complaint among the
families, and this is a description of it:

My boy’s out there is sick. He got indijestus. It jest takes him that
way every time he gets a little cold in him. He’ll start coughing and it
hurts him all in there [lungs and chest], and you kin hear him trying to
git his breath and he just has that indijestus with it every time.

My girl is sick too. The boy ain’t sick as the girl. He only gits that
way when he takes cold, but she dat way all the time.

:93

This mother had thirteen children, and most of them had had
trouble with “indijestus.” The family gave evidence of being
wracked with tuberculosis without the least suspicion of the lethal
character of the ailment. Each successive death was an accidental¬
ly ill effect of “indijestus.” Other descriptions of ailments suggest
serious maladies, but in the absence of both diagnosing physicians
or adequate treatment of these disorders they usually take this
fatal issue, and perhaps affect others through contagion.

My husband he got sores all over him and I ain’t got but one sore.

This child takes fits after his daddy. He ain’ long stopped having
them.

All my chillen is fond of having fevers.

They tell me its “two bumps” [tuberculosis]; anyhow he keep a terrible
misery in his throat so he can’t swallow water.

Two of my chillen die with “yellow thrash.” I gived them thread
salve made from yellow berries but they die right on.

I been sick a year going on two months. I ain’t nobody, honey. See
all these here sores on my legs {pointing to open sores as large as one's
hand\ , water runs out of my legs there like that all the time. I can’t lay
down. I have to set up all the time. I can’t lay down. If I lay down this
here water you see running out will overflow my heart. I ain’t nobody to
be depended on. Liable to be dead tomorrow. I jest set here all day and
fan flies. All this begin when I was four years old; now I’m at changing
life. Sometimes I’m so hot look like I’m gonna run out of my skin, but
in the evenings I get jest as cold as ice.

My wife here she out of her mind; jest come and go you know. She
been sick so long.

My boy there [aged eleven] he had tumors — you know, a risin’ come
out on his head. In three weeks them doctors got sixty dollars but they
saved him. For myself you see I ain’t got no teeth. I tooks a dose of
calomy and ’fore I know it my teeth all start dropping out. I has the
ear run, too, but that ain’t so bad. Now my wife she died ’cause she
had some tumors in her stomach. Them folks at the hospital [in Mont¬
gomery] just killed her. How I knows ’cause one of them nurses is my

:94

friend and she tole me herself they jest feeled around and couldn’t find
the tumor so they jest out and out and cut the wrong vescicule.

I been sick about four years. I have shortness of the breath and fulness
of the chest.

I got plenty chillen dead. One eleven months old died with fever; one
the thrase run over him and one girl sixteen died in 1915. She got wet
the wrong time. Doctor claim she had pellagacy. She said she could hear
something inside her head, and she break out with great big old red
bumps. Then they went in an’ where they left was just as black. She
didn’t live no time. She was sick four weeks to the day she died.

I been so sick with my back and running bladder.

My daughter died with the fever. I don’t know ’zackly what kind of

fever it was. Dr. - say it was swamp fever, but Dr. - say it

was malaria. My son die with heart trouble. That what Dr. -

say, but Dr. - say it was bad blood. Dr. - ’s father was my

husband’s father’s master. That’s wha’ he gets the same name.

That child there has spells since she was a little baby. Jest one right
after another from eight to four o’clock every day for two years. I dosed
her with calomel and I sent to Montgomery and got some worm pow¬
der and got nineteen worms from her in one day. But she can’t learn
nothing in school now. She jest sets with her mouth open and her
tongue doubled back most of the time.

The heavy fall of death prompts to reliance upon both herbs and
something akin to magic, in the attempt to bring about cures.
The little granddaughter of one of the older women became ill.

I done all I could. Then one of them nurses in Tuskegee says to me
I weren’t doing the right thing by the child. Honey, I sho’ was hurted so
much ’cause I done everything for the little motherless thing. So I got
me a bottle of castoria and fed it to her but hit didn’t help her none.
By and by I was told to wash her in dish water, so I done that every
night for a long time. Then when I fear’d it warn’t no use, my dead
friend she come to me in a dream. She and me was dear friends together.
She stood right there at the bed like real and she washed up a big sheet
till hit was pure white. She ain’t never spoke till she got done. Then she
hung it up and spoke for the first time. She said, “Dat child ain’t gonna
die; she gwine live and grow up from there restrenkened.” I got some

J95

more castoria and worked on the baby and here she am — well and
healthy. It sho’ was a miraculous sent from God.

Whooping cough is treated by tying a leather string around the
child’s neck. A necklace of cork and moles’ feet is used to make
teething easy. “White Wonder Salve” softens up old injuries;
“Thread Salve” cures “yellow thrash.” A woman said: “Papa
died with pneumonia. He wouldn’t use nothing but rubbing medi¬
cine, and wouldn’t never call no doctor.” Another woman, with
enormous sores of long standing on her arm and breast, was trying
to nurse her baby. “Dese boils hurt so bad,” she complained.
“Dey’s sore from de kernel. I been so sick I could hardly stand
up.” She put sulphur and vaseline on these sores. There was,
however, a sense of the possibility of contagion. She talked of
weaning the baby “so de boils won’t turn on it.” Still another
woman kept a string around the children’s necks to keep off dis¬
ease. Pomegranate hull tea and broom-straw root tea are used for
“back weakness.” Peach-tree leaves and elephant tongue are
good for fever. The woman who gave this formula said “doctor
ain’t no good when it comes to fevers.” Boiled fireweed and lard
make an excellent salve for burns. Sheep-nanny tea, kerosene, and
sugar may be used for whooping cough, or red onions alone. If
swollen feet are sweated first in pine top and mullen, then in cedar
water, they will give no more trouble. Pepper and salt will
cure spasms.

Use of Physicians

Rural calls are expensive and time consuming to make, whether
the physicians take into account the ability of patients to pay or
not. During the past year 258 of the 612 Negro families used the
professional services of physicians, 322 did not use them, and in
32 cases the information could not be secured.

The expenditures for health as nearly as they could be estimated
were as shown in Table XXV.

The fee for an office consultation is $2.50 and $3.00. Fees for
rural calls appear to vary according to distance and accessibility,

196

sometimes amounting to $12. A curious practice of using proxies
in the diagnosis of disease is noted in the following case:

I fell mighty low sick. I don’t know exactly what the trouble. Think
the doctor says it was an abscess on my bladder and it busted. The doc¬
tor didn’t come to see me ’cause he was busy wid a label case, but he

sent Mr. - over to see me and he took down my complaint and

written up my case. No, Mr. - ain’t no doctor but he writes up my

case and takes it back to Dr. - and he sent me some medicine.

All of the physicians serving the Negroes of this part of the
country are white, save one who lives in the town of Greenwood.
Some of the physicians are also landowners. One doctor, in par-

TABLE XXIV
Health Expenditures

None .

$3°-$3 4 .

Amount unknown. .

I:5

35” 39 .

Under $5 .

1 12

4°“ 44 .

" 5

$ 5-$ 9 .

45” 49 .

10- 14 .

50 and over. . . .

• • • 17

<5 'v .

20- 24 .

Total .

. . . 612

25- 29 .

ticular, seems to be greatly liked and admired by the Negroes. He
extends them credit, does not exact exorbitant fees, and is sym¬
pathetic with their complaints. few of the plantation-owners
will send doctors to their good workers when they are ill, or guar¬
antee the payment of their bills. This is sufficient security since
the doctor’s bill can be taken out of the crop. For the most part,
however, the doctors insist upon some security for the debt before
calling. Ownership of a cow, or mule, or other property will suffice,
and these are taken in if the bills are not paid within a reasonable
time. Some of the objection to doctors was based upon their in¬
sistence upon prompt payment in cash.

They just gets all our money when we is sick. A poor nigger has a hard
time. You phones them and they say, “Is you got the money?’’ If you
ain’t, you need not ’spect them. You gotta have that money right on
the table or you just lies here and dies.

197

Adjustments are made around the necessity for doctors. One
woman, in speaking of her husband, said:

When I get sick, he don’t take me to no doctor. He’ll buy medicine
and bring it to me. He’ll go to the doctor hisself, but he won’t take me.
Last time I was sick I had stomach trouble and he kept getting me medi¬
cine and I got worse, so he got a midwife and she said my womb had
fallen. She fixed it up and I got all right. He had been giving me “666”
and castor oil.

As serious as any other factor, however, in the attitude toward and
frequently fatal result of disease is the air of resignation toward
sickness when it comes. It explains to some extent the frequent
lack of faith in doctors and the diffidence about certain public
health measures.

Old man B - took dropsy. His legs bust open and his feet bust

open. He had money enough to buy fifty-cent socks, but he mint so
many they had to put ten-cent socks on him. They take him to springs
but it didn’t do no good. When God get hold of you, you can go to any
kind of springs but it won’t help you none.

An old man and his wife, both devoutly religious, sat waiting for
death. Said the husband:

The Marster [God] give me notice about six months ago for me to
wind up my portion of this world’s goods and to go in secret prayer. I was
in the room and he come in too and just look like I could shake hands
with him. I don’t feel sick but I’m painful.

Said the wife:

The Lord come to me about three or four weeks ago. I was in bed and
I look up and saw him just like I’m seeing you, and he was in a book. I
got up and put on my burial clothes and he was waiting for me. I called
my son to come in there and look at him but couldn’t nobody see him
but me. I kept waiting all day dressed for I thought he done come to
take me. I’m prepared to die when he do come to get me. I ain’t dead
yet and I thought good God done come after me long time ago.

Midwives

The role of the midwife and her method can be best understood
in the account of one of the best-known “grannies” of the county:

198

How Training W as Acquired

These old people ’round here learned me how to deliver babies. Long

before I ever thought ’bout it we was at Mr. - ’s sister’s house and

she got confined and they sent for the granny and she didn’t come. I
didn’t know and mammy didn’t know what to do. So I measured the
baby’s navel and cut it off and I cut it off too much and that baby died,
but the doctor didn’t do nothing about it but he said that old granny
ought to be stopped for not coming to see about her and I couldn’t help
it ’cause I was doing the best I could. Then after that, when I was living
down on the hill a girl got confined and her brothers got on the horses
and started for the granny and ’fore she could get there the baby begin
to come on and I told her I wan’t gonna let it drap, to let it come on that
I wan’t gonna let it hit the floor. I put the girl to bed good as I could,
and I didn’t put a cloth to her but I seed after the baby.

Treatment of the Mother

You know you don’t put a cloth to a woman till after three days; it is
best to let it drain for that long. It will kill her if you bound her up before
that time. I don’t like to have a crowd around when I am bringing a
baby; somebody might go out and say one thing and some will go out and
say another. Some of them will go out and talk about how the woman
carried on and I just don’t like to have them around. You turn the baby
on the right side so as to give the blood chance to go all through his
body. Then you turn the mother on her right side and let her lay on her
right side for ’bout a hour.

A Knife To Cut the Pains

I usually put a sharp knife under the pillow; they say that cuts the
pain, but I don’t know whether it do or not. Some people say they can
tell how many children you gonna have by the number of rings on the
cord, but I don’t believe that’s so ’cause the old granny told me I was
gonna have ’bout ten chillen and I ain’t never had but one. After that I
said I was done with that saying.

Mighty few of the chillen glad to see you come, for they ’fraid they will
have to give you a little bread. Now when I lived in Birmingham all the
little chillen used to see me coming and holler, “Yon come my mammy,’’
and they all say, “Don’t you stay down there and suffer for nothing to

. > J ^

eat.

Cutting the Cord with Scissors

I always cut the cord with scissors and when I get through I just slip
them under the pillow. They tells us you ought to get hold of what you

199

charge before you hit a lick of work. These folks don’t want to pay you

for nothing. I heard that Mrs. F - was telling all the women to use

G - . G - is a right nice seamstress and I reckon she do sewing for

Mrs. F - and Mrs. F - tell the women to use her, but I reckon the

Lord will straighten things out. I loses more than I make trying to get
my money.

Causes of Deformity

Plenty women’s chillen is deformed ’cause its the way they do in car¬
rying them and they always trying to lay it on the fever, ’cause fever
don’t cause you to be deformed ’cause I try to hold the jints together so
close so that they won’t be deformed. I had a brother who was deformed;
he was marked by a turtle. My mamma was plowing one day and plowed
up a turtle and she stuck a plow in the back of his head. He sets his feet
out like a turtle and walks and slides them back like one. I got one of his
shoes in here now and it don’t look like it was ever straight. I was a plow
hand when my first child was born and I plowed up to the time and it
didn’t hurt it none; its just all right if you don’t let the plow kick you.
That woman over yonder plows all the time and it don’t hurt her, and
that other woman said she went over to her mama’s and picked a bag of
peas and carried them home and that’s what caused her to have him de¬
formed.

Dirt-Dauber Tea for Labor Pains

Some folks say if you pick the dirt out of dirt-dauber holes and make
tea out of it, it will cut the pains, but I don’t know whether that will do
any good or not. I sometimes give them a little weak camphor to force
the pains and that is mighty weak too. Sometimes when folks eat dirt
and when the baby comes its a whole lot of dirt on his back where they
have been eating too much. I don’t believe in using so many of these
old things ’cause I believe some of them is pizen.

White-Flannel Weed for “ Whites* ’

There is a weed grows out here called “white flannel” that is mighty
good for whites [leucorrhea]. A woman asked me once, “Ain’t you a
doctor woman?” And I told her yes, and she told me her daughter don’t
never have no health and said she can’t hardly get over the floor, and I
told her to go get her some white flannel and make her a tea off it; and
she wanted to know if a yard would be enough to get and I told her it
wasn’t no cloth but a weed. So I went up on the hill and found her some
and give it to her. That woman got all right. Her husband had to stop
work every week one day and stay home with her and help her scrub,
but after she started taking the white-flannel tea she got all right. That
white flannel sho’ is good.

200

How To Reduce Water

Another thing, some women when they has babies they drink so much
water that their stomach’s get large and poke way out and get pot-
gutted; well, if you fix up some corn bread with a heap of salt in it and
put it on the fire and let it burn right black and then split it open and
put it in a bucket and let her drink off that, her stomach will come down
jest as nice.

Hot Ginger Tea for Retarded Menstruation

Heap of them come to me for female trouble but I tell them to go on
to the doctor ’cause I’m ’fraid to fool with so many things. When the
flowers is clogged I give them hot ginger tea.

Bad Blood and Corn Bread

When I went to the clinic they said my blood was good, but I told the
doctor my blood might be good but there was something the matter with
my body ’cause I can’t eat corn bread no more. I used to eat corn bread
all the time and I believe I eat too much ’cause one day something come
and said to me just like somebody talking, “That corn bread is killing
you.” It done that twice and I quit eating it ’cause I didn’t want it to
kill me, and I told the doctor about it and told him to give me some medi¬
cine for it.

The county has been attempting to give some instruction to the
Negro midwives, recognizing that most of the deliveries are made
by them. The health officer has corralled sixty-seven of these
midwives and has been talking to them about cleanliness and
essential though elementary hygiene for mother and child, and
about the necessity of records, although most of the midwives are
illiterate. From the record of the health officer’s work it appears
that each midwife had been talked to once in individual confer¬
ence.

Attitude toward Syphilis

In the entire 612 families interviewed there was not a single
expression which seemed to connect syphilis with the sexual act.
The fact of ‘Tad blood” carried little social stigma and was spoken
of in about the same manner as one speaks of having a “bad heart”
or “bad teeth.” The violent expressions of jealousy, manifested
toward women suspected of transferring affections to other men,

201

reflected no relation to transmitted infection. In one instance only
was ‘'bad blood” associated with heredity. “I knowed I had bad
blood ’cause my mamma had scrofula when I was born.” In but
few instances was “bad blood” associated with syphilis as a vene¬
real disease. Where there were obvious physical manifestations
of the disease the persons were referred to as being afflicted, but
this was generalized. Often no distinction was made between com¬
plaints and the symptoms of “bad blood.” Accordingly, treat¬
ments for bad blood were expected to cure headaches, indigestion,
pellagra, sterility, sores of various sorts, and general run-down
condition.

Attitude toward the Health Demonstration

The Rosenwald Fund experiment in mass control of syphilis
was probably more successful in bringing a large number of per¬
sons to have blood tests made than any similar venture. The rea¬
sons for this lie in the character and habits of the population.
There was a lack of social embarrassment in being examined and
treated for syphilis. The directors of the experiment succeeding
in giving a medical rather than a social stress to the connotation
of “bad blood.”

My blood was drawed twice but they never sent me no invitation
about it. I bet my blood ain’t good ’cause I hear everybody say they
blood is bad. I think mine ought to be bad too. I just went down there
one day and said I wanted shots and they shot me.

The tradition of dependence and obedience to the orders of au¬
thority, whether these were mandatory or not, helps to explain the
questionless response to the invitation to examination and treat¬
ment. In the conduct of the demonstration, however, the greatest
kindliness was shown the patients, and the invitations were in no
sense supported by force, either direct or implied.

The extent of sickness among the Negro families and the hope
of relief without cost were means of drawing and holding them.
“Me and my wife went over to the schoolhouse and they drawed
our blood and say it was good, but I can’t understand why we are
always so painful.” The familiarity of some of the Negro families

202

with the method of giving “shots” by physicians for which com¬
paratively large sums were paid had given them a “set” for the
demonstration. Free “shots” were taken as a boon. The fitting
of “salves” and red medicine of the old clinic into old habits of
getting relief gave confidence. Some of the persons attempted to
get the salves for general complaints, even though their blood was
reported “good.” “They said my blood was good. You don’t get
no treatment if your blood is good, but sometimes I wish it was
bad ’cause they gives away a salve up there and I wanted some of it
so bad.” The “shots” were indeed expected to cure all complaints.

They drawed my blood twice last year but I never did get no hearing
from it. Look like mine ought to be bad ’cause I was bothered with
pellagacy sometime ago.

I goes down to the clinic last Wednesday for the doctor to give me a
shot but he didn’t give me none. I had a roaring in my head for four or
five years.

Good effects observed prompted many to continue treatment and
others to seek examination and treatment.

I never knowed women to have babies like they do this year. Them
shots is making them have babies. I knowed women who been married

a long time and this year they are all poking out. There is K - W - ;

she about thirty-odd years old and been all about different places too and
she been taking them shots and now she is ’way out yonder. You reckon
them shots make you have babies? I sho’ don’t want no more and if they
do I rather have bad blood.

Just think of Sister S - up there. Her husband was as raw as a

piece of meat the first of this year, but he done got better since he been
taking these shots.

The medicine I took helped me 50 per cent. I had a terrible misery
in my throat. I was sorry for the time to come to drink water, it hurt me
so bad. I have taken twenty shots and it certainly has helped me.

The cost of doctors has helped attendance at the clinics:

I tell you dem doctors done de people a whole lot of good ’cause heap
of people wan’t able to pay a doctor. They have done this country good

203

’cause heaps of dem was in a bad fix. The doctors done git tight on de
people since dese clinics been through here. They won’t come to see you
less you got the money or will pay something. See these folks is knocking
them. They charge seven, eight, nine, and ten dollars ’cording how far
they have to come.

Finally there was the attitude of appreciation for the gesture of
helpfulness which the demonstration represented, and a response
on that basis. Many of the families are enthusiastic in their praise
of the work being done by the clinic. The wife in a family consist¬
ing of mother and father and ten children said:

Them shots really hoped me. ’Til last May I ain’t layed down a night
the whole night and slept without getting up and staying wake in twenty
years. I can lay down and go to sleep with the chickens and never wake
up. When I got so I could rest, I got scared. I used to get up and not

feel like working, but now I can get up and feel good . This baby

[a little girl five years old] has taken twenty and she don’t cry none
hardly. That little boy [aged seven] was born sick, and he has taken all
his shots and he is so much better. He used to get off and hide and never
did run and play like the rest of the children. We would have to hunt
for him all the time. I was jest expecting to find him dead any time ’cause
he would go ’way off somewhere and hide all the time. Now he runs
round jest like the rest of them. [The mother and father and eight of the
ten children gave positive Wassermanns.]

The figures for mortality, morbidity, illegitimacy, illiteracy,
poverty, insufficiency of food and clothing, are barren records for
an understanding of the human struggle behind them. They all
come to a focus in the story of Mary Hardy, a very sad and very
bewildered woman, whose career follows the pattern of life around
her, because she could not understand how or why her children con¬
tinued to die from some strange, persistent malady. She was not
married but had wanted the security of a husband and a family.

The first man I liked real well give me a baby. My grandmother made
me leave home, and I went and lived with another woman till the baby
came, then grandma let me come back home, but he stole me again one
night. I had to wait till my grandmother was sleep, so it was about nine
o’clock and I slipped out of the window and he was down in the woods
waiting for me. I went with him to his people and I stayed with his
sister. I never did stay with him, but my grandmother would not let me

204

come back home after I’d done run away and he kept putting me off.
He promised to marry me the next morning. I never would a run off with
him if he hadn’t promised to marry me, but kept putting me off and I
wanted to go back to grandma, but she told me not to come back there
less she tell me, so I just had to stay. I stayed there with his sister three
years and got these other two chillen. His mother kept the oldest boy
and raised him.

When my third baby was coming, his father jumped up and married
another girl. She was in a family way and I wondered why he married
her ’cause she was in a family way and he didn’t marry me when I was
in a family way too. This girl was a school teacher and he married her
one month before she got down. Then when he started coming back
’round, I told him, “I ain’t going to fool with you no more; you done
fooled me enough.” I got real mad. I got mad about him, so I told him
to stay away ’cause I felt bad about it ... . and I was ’specting to marry
him.

He left here and went to Montgomery. Then he sent me money to
come to him but I was so hungry that I took the money and bought us
something t’eat. I guess I’d a went if we hadn’t been so hungry. After he
married, he would give me rice and things for the chillen every time he
saw me in town. He just seemed to be in love with the chillen. They
say now that he is living with another woman. His wife died when she
was getting down the second time. He had left and went to Montgomery
to work but they wasn’t separated. It was after she died that he sent
for me to come to him.

Now my youngest boy is sickly and got bumps breaking out on his
face — you know, fever blisters, but big ones, and when they burst they
leave a sore. The sore leaves a black place when it dries up. I took him
to the doctor once and he said he charged $2.5 o. I didn’t have but $2.00,
so he said he would charge me that. Then we had to send for him once
and I ain’t never paid him for that. He usually charge $12.50 to come
out here.

Just when I thought I got my chillen well, my oldest boy died. He
just rotted to death. This is how he got sick. He started with a headache.
He said his head nearly bust open and Br’er [brother] got some salts
and give him and he didn’t complain no more for about two weeks; then
he went to school one morning and the next morning they didn’t have no
school and he got up and it started with a hurting right here [just inside
the elbow bend]. He said it was itching first, then hurting, and he just
started running ’round having fits. He just went crazy. We rubbed
and greased his arms and we rubbed him good, but he just went crazy
and tore up the things in the house. The doctor give him some medicine

205

when we took him to him and he said it was pellagacy but I ain’t seed
where it done him a bit of good. He told one man down here that it was
the curriest pellagacy he ever seed in his life, and he told somebody up
there that he didn’t know what it was; but he told me it was pellagacy.
Well, that boy would run away and I’d hear him calling way up on the
hill. He just come unjointed. It all just rotted off — all his hands and
arms. He bit one of his fingers off and he never was in his right mind
after he first went crazy. He would take the bed down and when you ask
him what he was doing it for, he’s say he wanted to put it up on a hill.
He swold up and just come in two. He died in two weeks.

When I got sick I went to Dr. - and he told me I needed shots

but that he couldn’t give them to me ’cause I wasn’t able to pay. He
asked me if I had any property and I told him no. He said he just could¬
n’t give ’em to me then. He said, “If you just had a cow to put up
against it!”

The experimental health demonstration set up by the Rosen-
wald Fund in a portion of the county in 1930 has made certain
social discoveries vital to other than the venereal problem. The
adequate treatment of specific luetic conditions demanded pre¬
liminary general physical examinations and these laid bare an
extravagant incidence of other disabilities. Some 7,500 blood ex¬
aminations and 3,200 urine analyses were made on those under
treatment, and a total of 2,042 prescriptions dispensed during the
first year. Apart from this, however, 3,500 typhoid inoculations
were given, and 600 children immunized against diphtheria, and
200 vaccinated against smallpox. This altogether, with the Red
Cross distribution of seeds for gardens and yeast to be used in com¬
bating pellagra, constituted one of the most intense concentrations
upon a reconstructive health campaign of any rural section in the
South.

It was evident, however, that the dependent relationship of the
Negro tenants to white landowners called for education of the
landowner as well as the tenant. And although this has not yet
become common in either direction, there are indications that
some of the white planters are recognizing time off for health as
profitable in the end. One of them commented thus to an official
of the demonstration; “The year before this demonstration was

206

put on I paid out over fifteen hundred dollars to doctors for medi¬
cal service. This year I have had a doctor on the place only twice
and those were for new babies. The men work better . ”

The startling inbreeding of disease among the Negroes, the
violent eruption of nutritional disorders, and the rapid contagion
of infectious diseases are intricately bound up with their isolation,
their low literacy, and their cultural backwardness. They have
little or no knowledge of the diseases responsible for their excessive
deaths, and little access to physicians when the seriousness of ail¬
ments exceeds their simple folk remedies. With these, however,
goes a life-organization which permits neither the full responsibil¬
ity of the planter for their troubles nor the free development
among and for themselves of controls over their most common
disabilities. The situation has fostered a striking disorganization.

As in other respects, the most far-reaching changes in habits are
proceeding at most rapid pace in the work done with and through
the children. This suggests that along with the programs of
adult education, social work, and compulsory health regulations,
the elementary schools demand foremost attention if these changes
are to be given permanence and significance.

207

Chapter VIII

CONCLUSION

THE basic assumption of much of the literature regarding
Negroes in America, scientific and otherwise, is that they
represent a culture which is, in itself, widely different from that of
the Euro-American culture in which they live. This is implicit in
the frequent and serious references to the success, or failure, or
ineptness of the members of this group in taking on the white
man’s civilization. The unique situation of the Negroes and their
relationship to the American culture, however, raise questions of
considerably wider range than this local and racial relationship.
For it is possible to observe in the adjustment experience of this
group, under well-defined conditions, something of the process by
which individual and group behavior patterns themselves are con¬
ditioned.

It has been impossible to escape the force of tradition, as repre¬
sented in the customs established under the institution of slavery,
and adhered to, by the white population in their relation to the
Negroes, and by the Negroes in relation to themselves. What has
resulted is an inevitable outcome of these traditions as expressed
in the life of the subjects of this study. The community studied
reflects a static economics not unlike the Mexican hacienda , or
the condition of the Polish peasant — a situation in which the mem¬
bers of a group are “muffled with a vast apathy.” It is unquestion¬
ably the economic system in which they live, quite as much or
even more than the landlords, that is responsible for their plight.
These fine distinctions, however, are not usually made by the Ne¬
groes; and to them the system is the government, and the govern¬
ment is the landlord.

208

The social results of the economic system in this area, past and
present, have been positive and unmistakable. The tradition, sup¬
ported by what remains of the plantation structure, has given a
measure of equilibrium to the social relations existing within the
structure. From the nature of the external conditions determining
the early social organization of this group it has taken form, natu¬
rally, outside the dominant current of the American culture. At
the same time, and unfortunately, the very fact of this cultural
difference presents the danger of social disorganization in any
sudden attempt to introduce new modes of living and conceptions
of values. The situation is one clearly of isolation and cultural
lag. Changes are occurring slowly, however, and it is possible to
observe and to measure them.

Strangely enough, the changes appear to have come in this set¬
ting least rapidly through the introduction of machinery. Farm¬
ing implements are practically the same as they were three or four
generations ago. On the other hand, however, there has been defi¬
nite cultural penetration through the medium of the school, the
church, the influence of persons educated outside the community,
the exposure to demonstrations in health and agriculture, and
through returned migrants. Throughout, the weight of tradition,
as would be expected, has resisted these changes.

It seems warrantable to suggest that slavery was an incidental
product of the plantation and that the habits and customs of the
Negroes, in so far as they are peculiar, were both shaped and pre¬
served by the conditions inherent in the plantation system itself.
The high point in the development of the plantation was the high
point in the development of the institution of slavery. There were
plantations in x^merica before there was slavery. Indeed, the Vir¬
ginia colony was first a plantation. It is essentially a frontier de¬
vice. Thompson has described the plantation as being character¬
ized by forced labor, open resources, and concentration upon a
staple crop. The passing of the frontier could have no other
effect than to render the plantation, in its institutionalized form,
archaic.

There is strong indication that the social relations which evolved

under this structure, largely as a phase of control, are responsible
for both the cultural backwardness of the labor force and the ro¬
mantic efforts, against the logic of economics, to preserve the struc¬
ture itself. The feature of the plantation development in this coun¬
try, which had most persistent and compelling influence upon the
social life of the Negroes, probably began with the requirement of
mobility in the labor, as a result of the vicissitudes of the first
staple crop. The cultivation of tobacco resulted in such rapid and
wasteful exhaustion of the soil as to require constant movement
in search of new lands. Such mobility demanded attachment to
the person rather than to the soil. It is obvious that a contingency
of this character would favor slavery over the status of simple
serfdom, as the old world knew it. Moreover, there was the prob¬
lem of property inheritance which, in the new world, was more
conspicuously and profitably a matter of labor than of land.
These factors in themselves helped to fix the logic of slavery, and
to fix it within the plantation economy. And, although the indus¬
trial system itself might be considered, in a sense, a plantation
economy, it has never invoked, as did slavery, the complete de¬
pendence of labor upon the proprietor of the plantation. The
plantation technique, on the side of administration, was most effi¬
cient in respect to discipline and policing, and this technique has
survived, more or less, despite the formal abolition of the institu¬
tion of slavery.

The objective of this study has been, so far as possible, to por¬
tray realistically the life of a rural Negro community under the
influence of a plantation economy. It is not possible or desirable
to formulate from these observations general conclusions regard¬
ing the Negro rural community as a whole. There are, however,
certain inescapable characteristics of this agricultural economy:
The plantation communities in which Negroes live, in so far as
they are areas of highest population concentration for this group,
are also likely to be areas of greatest cultural isolation. In such
communities will be found, with but few exceptions, similar situa¬
tions measurable in terms of illiteracy, mobility, schooling, tenant¬
ry, and like factors.

210

In 1930 there were 164 counties with preponderant Negro popu¬
lations. The number of such counties after i860 first increased
then slowly declined, and not until 1920 did the number fall below
the level of i860. In that year there were 244 counties in which
half or more of the population was Negro, and in 1880 there were
300. Throughout this period of seventy years since slavery the
areas of heaviest Negro population concentration have remained
practically the same.

Not all tenant areas, however, are areas of heaviest Negro con¬
centration, and, similarly, there are other types of agricultural areas
with Negro populations which do reveal striking contrasts. There
are at hand certain comparative data from other southern counties
with different Negro population proportions, and different his¬
torical backgrounds. Gibson County, in Tennessee, referred to
earlier, is a diversified farming area, with only 23 per cent of its
total population and 18.8 per cent of its rural farm population
Negro. Within the minor civil divisions of the county the Negro
proportions fluctuate in numerical importance from no Negroes to
as much as 41.3 per cent of the population. This suggests, in the
first place, a greatly modified isolation, and a wider current of com¬
munication with the outside. In Macon County the smallest Ne¬
gro proportion in a civil district is 58 per cent and the largest 97
per cent. In Gibson County there is greater and longer-range mi¬
gration, a more pronounced interest in education, more property
ownership, and more clearly recognizable affectional ties within
the families.

The lack of dependence upon a staple crop and the absence of a
plantation economy may be pointed to as being, in part at least,
responsible for the higher home-ownership proportions. Differences
in customs follow closely these statistical differences, and suggest
very clearly the different standards and codes under which the two
types of rural areas operate. There is more money in circulation
in the farm-owning areas, and this is an aid both to domestic
planning and to the development of independence.

The frequency of active affectional relations between parents
and children creates a distinctly different picture of the dominant

21 1

pattern of family life. Moreover, in these landowning areas the
fathers play a stronger role in the family, and the children away
from home more often maintain contact and remain a functioning
part of the social unit of the family.

Staple crops are a mixed blessing. The economic advantage of
the old pattern of cotton cultivation has disappeared in the face of
the challenge of world-competition to the crop itself. When at the
high noon of its power, profit, and glamor, the southern states
were supplying the raw materials for a large part of the world.
There are today over fifty cotton-growing countries. But despite
the evident decadence of a once flourishing institution, the social
habits inherent in the system hang on little challenged and even
less changed. Soil exhaustion and abandonment go on despite the
fact that the limit of the frontier has been reached. A natural re¬
sponse to this has been the constant and determined movement
away of both Negro and white populations to the city and its in¬
dustries in so far as these industries could absorb them.

The romantic personalities of the past who dominated the plan¬
tation are rapidly passing. Control becomes increasingly imper¬
sonal. Large areas of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Georg¬
ia are already in the possession of banks or insurance companies in
satisfaction of mortgage defaults. The situation suggests the need
of a complete reorganization of agriculture, and particularly in
the Cotton Belt, in respect to both production and distribution.

The surplus of cotton grown in the South has already forced
the desperate expedient of attempting to reduce the cotton acre¬
age. The first attempt at reduction, however, merely served to
intensify the limited cultivation, with the result that more cotton
was grown on smaller acreage by fewer persons. The greatest pres¬
sure is being felt at present by the tenants, dulled and blocked in
by a backwardness which is a fatal heritage of the system itself.
But the fate of the tenant is but an aspect of the fate of the
southern farmer generally, and the plight of all of these awaits a
comprehensive planning, which affects not merely the South but
the nation.

212

INDEX

Adoption of children, 29, 60, 63-66, 71
Africa, 3, 22 f.

Age distribution, 1 5
x^ges, reckoning of, 17
x^griculture, 103. tf/jo Farming
Alabama: Black Belt of, 7; cotton counties
of, 8

Amusements, see Play life
Andrews, John A., Hospital, 188
Automobile-riding, 183

Bail 1 13

Ball-playing, 68, 180
Baptists, 151-53
Begging, 85

Birth: registration of, 186 f . ; use of mid¬
wives, 198 f. See also Fecundity
Birth control, 57, 58
Blood tests, 188-89, 202-4
Borrowing, 119
Breeding, 58
Burial, 162-70

Card-playing, 67, 68, 181
Casuals, 113-14
Charity, acceptance of, 85
Child workers, 1 16-18
Children, 57-70, 192; adoption of, 29, 60,
63, 64-66, 71; born out of wedlock, 66-
69; economic value of, 57, 61 ; education
of parents by, 148-49; handicapped, 62,
189; how they come, 69-70; of irregular
and broken homes, 142; of owners, 142;
pregnancy, 64; and school, 66, 129-36,
141

Church, the, 67, 182; in action, 153-61; an
anniversary, 170-73; ceremonial func¬
tion of, 178; changing, 170-79; influence
of, 84; programs of, 183; as recreation,
180; and religion, 150-79; as a social in¬
stitution, 150-70; suppers, 1 81. See also
Funeral

Clinics, 202-4. See also Midwives; Physi¬
cians

Collateral, 119
Color consciousness, 57
Community, the, 12 ff.; economic life of,
103-28

Concerts, 182
Confinement, 198 f.

Conveniences, modern, 98-100
Cotton, 8, 103, 128
Courts, 1 91

Courtship and marriage, 47-57
Credit, 128

Crime, 1 13. See also Murder; Weapons
Cripples, 189
Croppers, share-, 112

Culture, 208 f.; and color, 148; cultural
heritage of the plantation Negro, 3
Cures, 196

Dances, 182

Death, 195; causes of, 187 ff. See also Mor¬
tality; Survivals
Death benefits, 183
Defectives, 189

Dependence, 104, 202; tradition of, 27-31
Dialect of southern rural Negroes, 4
Diet, 100-102. See also Nutritional dis¬
orders

Disease, folk knowledge of, 192-96; and use
of physicians and midwives, 196-99
Divorce, 63, 71-80
Doctors, see Physicians
Dogma, 157
Domestic servants, 114
Drinking, 182

Earnings of Negro farmers, 106, hi, 124-25
Economic life of the community, see Labor,
division of; System, economic, pressure
of

Education: and the church, 175; expendi¬
tures for, 136; and ownership, 141; of
parents, 129-36, 148-49; and the people,
129-49; and social changes, 136-49; val¬
ue of, 132

213

Elopements, 55
Emotionalism, 152

Families, absent members of, 31; with ad¬
vanced standards, 44; assembled, 37-39;
birthplace of heads of, 26; the children,
57-70; composition of, 29-31; courtship
and marriage, 47-57, 146; disorganized
legal unions, 43-44; legal unions, 40-42;
non-agricultural, 42; non-legal unions,
40-42; number of, studied, 14; quasi-,
37-40; separation and divorce, 63, 71-80;
shelter and food, 90-102; size of, 32, 138;
stable, 25-27, 34-35, 40-43, 44-46; with
strong maternal dominance, 35-36; suc¬
cessful, 143; and tradition, 34; transient,
with shifting family members, 39-40;
What is respectable? 80-90
Family structure, types of, 32-34
Farm implements, ownership of, 118-19
Farm laborers, 1 12-13
Farming methods, 23-25
Fecundity, 57, 59, 187
Fishing, 181
Folk, 4, 6

Folk knowledge of disease, 192-96
Food and shelter, 90-102. See also Diet;
Housing

Frolics, 84, 180, 181-82
Funeral, a, 162-70

Gambling, 84

Gibson County, Tennessee, 94, 21 1
God, 178
Gossip, 81

Government loans, 123

Health: demonstration, 202-4, 206; ex¬
penditures, 196-97; records, 187
Heritage: cultural, 3; social, 16
Homes, ownership of, 45
Housing, 45, 90-99. See also Food and
Shelter
Hunting, 181
Husband, the ideal, 56
Hymn, a formal, 155

Illegitimacy, 49, 64, 66-70
Illiteracy, 126, 137, 138, 139, 143. See also
Literacy
Imbecility, 189

Income, 107, 124, 125, 143; of cotton farms
in the South, 125

Insurance, 184
Isolation, 90

Jealousy, 51, 52

, Labor: casuals, 1 13-14; child workers,
1 1 6-1 8; division of, 103-19; farm labor¬
ers, 1 12-13; occupations other than
farming, 1 1 5 ; owners, 105-9; ownership
of work animals and farm implements,
118-19; share-croppers, 112; tenants,
1 09-1 1 ; women workers, 115-16
Land ownership, 10, 105-9, 206. See also
Tenure

Landlords, 124, 128

Law, attitude toward, 191-92

Lectures, 182

Legal and non-legal unions, 40-44, 51. See
also Marriage
Leisure-time activities, 182
Literacy, 21, 128, 129. See also Illiteracy
Lodges and societies, 183-84

Macon County, Alabama, 7 ff., 12 ff., 18,
188, 211

Malaria, 187-88

Marital status, 72. See also Divorce
Marriage: age at, 47; and courtship, 47-57,
146; early, 48; the ideal husband, 56-57;
the ideal wife, 54-56; legality of, 40-44,
51; postponement of, 49. See also Di¬
vorce; Family
Methodists, 151, 153
Midwives, 198 f.

Migration, 28, 143
Minister, the, 156
Miscarriages, 139, 189
Mismating, 77
Mobility, 77

Moral codes, 35-36. See also Respectability
Mortality, 58, 186 ff., 193. See also Death;

Survivals
Mortgages, 128
Mother, the role of, 29
Moving, reasons for, 117
Mulattoes, 57, 70, 89
Murder, 51, 182, 190
Musical instruments, 184

Non-legal and legal unions, 40-44, 51. See
also Marriage

Nutritional disorders, 207. See also Diet;
Pellagra

214

Obituary, an, 164

Occupations, see Labor, division of

Overcrowding, 100

Ownership; difficulty of, 108; and educa¬
tion, 141 ; of homes, 45; of land, 10, 105-
9, 206; of work animals and farm imple¬
ments, 118-19. See also Tenure

People, the, 29-44; and the school, 129-49
Pellagra, 14, 187, 188
Physical survivals of the past, 25
Physicians, 193, 196-98, 203, 207. See also
Clinics; Midwives
Piney Woods, Alabama, 7
Plantation, the, 103, 127, 129; the pattern
of, 1-7; the tradition of, 7-12
Play life, 180-85

Population of Macon County, Alabama, 10,
14 ff.

Prayer, 154, 160, 178
Pregnancy, 64. See also Birth
Proprietorship, 127

Race spirit, 175
Reading, 182
Recreation, see Play life
Red Cross, 28, 86, 102
Religion: beliefs, 4; and the church, 150-
79; denominations, 1 5 1 ; religious senti¬
ments, 178; service, form of, 152; skep¬
ticism, 178. See also Church; Funeral
Rent, 109; free, 1 14

Respectability, 80-90, 151, 191. See also
Moral codes

Rosenwald Fund, Julius, 188, 202, 206
Rosenwald school, 136

“Salt-Water” men, see Africa
Saturday trip to town, 180
School, the: age-grade of children, 135; at¬
tendance, 134; education of parents and
children, 129-36; influence of schooling
on social changes, 136-49; parties at,
185; and the people, 129-49; recreation
at, 185; and retardation, 141; school
term, 134
Security, 128
Self-improvement, 145
Separation and divorce, 63, 71-80
Sermon, 156-58, 160; an anniversary, 173 —

Settlements, unjust, 120-23

Sexual intercourse, 49, 182
Share-croppers, 112

Shelter and food, 90-102. See also Diet;

Housing
Shouting, 159

Sickness, 187. See also Disease
Slavery, 8, 18-22, 23, 103, 209
Social changes, influence of schooling on,

j36~49

Social distance, 148
Sports, 180-81

Stability, 25-27, 34-3 5, 40-43, 44"46
Stillbirths, 139, 187, 189
Subtenants, 1 12

Survivals, 16-18, 23, 152, 186-207
Syphilis, 187, 188-89, 201-2, 206
System, economic: cash earnings of Negro
farmers, 124-25; the dreary cycle of life,
125-28; pressure of, 119-28; unjust
settlements, 120-23

Tenants, 21, 104, 109-11, 127, 206
Tenure, 10, 103-5. See also Land owner¬
ship

Toilet facilities, 100
Trades, 140, 144, 147

Traditions, 34, 208; of dependence, 27-31;

social, 17
Tragedy, 144 _

Transient families, 39-40
Tuberculosis, 187, 193, 194
Tuskegee, the city of, 9 f.

Tuskegee Institute, 10, 13, 140, 144, 146,
148, 188

Undertaker, a Negro, 169
U.S. Public Health Service, 188
U.S. War Veterans Hospital, 186, 188

3 ! J } J 1 } 9

) > ' , " 1 , )

Venereal diseases. 187, 188—89, so1-2, 206
Violence, 187, 189-^2'

' • # , * , , ; > %

Washington, Booker T., 13

Wassermann tests, 1 8 3— 89, 202-4
Weapons, playhig with, 190
Weddings,’ 54
Winter duties, 183

Women: economic independence of, 48;
fast, 82; the position of, 114; workers,
115-16

Workers: child, 1 16-18; number of, 1 1 6 ;
women, 115-16. See also Labor

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